TMS Movie Review: 65
(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)
How is it I feel like we’re getting the worst releases of the year only a week into March? After my disappointing experiences with Frances O’Connor’s Emily and Jamie Dack’s Palm Trees and Power Lines, I figured Scott Beck & Bryan Woods’ 65 would be a good change of pace for some harmless action/adventure fun. But, oh, how wrong I was. This late winter/early spring period of the year is always my least favorite for new movies because it’s traditionally when the studios just dump most of their flops. With 65, I thought, surely male lead Adam Driver and some CG dinosaurs could entertainingly make up a most likely predictable script. But sadly, I couldn’t even be met with that simple request. Unlike Emily and Palm Trees, which both frustrated me with narrative and direction decisions; 65 does the opposite and plays it so safe, it’s completely boring.
The basics are pretty bare bones. Rather than set it a million years into the future, we go back 65 million years ago, “in a galaxy far, far away…” The protagonist, Commander Mills (Driver), is piloting a spaceship traveling from his fictional planet to bring a group of passengers to another planet, so Mills can afford a medical procedure for his daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman). But mid-flight, an asteroid hits the ship and it crash lands onto pre-historic planet Earth with all the passengers dead except for Mills and a little girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt).
(Columbia Pictures / Sony Pictures)
Outside of Driver, the only big names involved with 65 are Beck & Woods—who broke into Hollywood after writing the script for John Krasinski’s hit A Quiet Place (2018)—and legendary horror/sci-fi filmmaker Sam Raimi, who somehow got roped into this as an EP. As you can see from the ads, 65 quickly turns into Driver and Greenblatt versus wild dinosaurs and an ominously looming meteor shower. In many ways, this is the inverse of Dan Trachtenberg’s Prey from last year. But while Prey was a basic Predator prequel executed well technically, 65 feels like everyone just signed on for a quick paycheck. There is very little dialogue for multiple scenes of the sci-fi journey, similar to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); a movie which gets complaints from young viewers these days for being slow and having little character interactions. But at least that classic is visually saying something philosophical through science fiction and filmmaking. 65 is just a guy and a girl stuck on ancient Earth with no resources. Many times we’re reminded of famous movies which were more memorable, whether it’s Prey, Space Odyssey, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) or Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005).
The action sequences in 65 don’t bring anything new to the blockbuster formula and the forgettable characters with the barely-there plot make you need to fight from dozing off. Though, the audience’s lack of interest might distract from some of the convenient plot armor going on too. [How are Mills and Koa able to survive without proper sleep and food?] Adam Driver is one of the most interesting actors in modern cinema and has a lot of variety with his movie choices, so he will be fine in the long run. But I’m not sure what Beck & Woods’ follow-up to their first big BO bomb is going to be.