The name Simon Kinberg is a name that will definitely ring a bell among cinephiles. His biggest contribution is his involvement with the X-Men film franchise both as a writer and as a producer. He’s also been the producer on a small number of critical and financial projects with The Martian, Sherlock Holmes, Cinderella and Murder on the Orient Express. As a producer and creative consultant, Simon Kinberg has had a moderately successful career serving as a producer and only as a producer. It was a big question mark when he was set to make his first effort in the directors chair with $200 million movie with Dark Phoenix. A movie, by all accounts, was destined to not be a hit even if he never directed it. It’s never wise for any studio to give a someone that much money when they’ve never even made a movie with a budget of even $50 million. Sure, you might say Kinberg has an advantage because he’s been involved with the X-Men movies but serving as a director and a producer are two wildly distinctive roles on a movie production. Dark Phoenix isn’t the worst X-Men movie nor is it the the worst comic-book movie, but the biggest issue was Simon Kinberg as the director. Nothing felt special about the future of him directing and maybe a big behind the scenes issue was that the buzz for this movie simply wasn’t there since day one.
The financial disaster of that movie aside, it looks like Simon Kinberg got another shot directing with his next film The 355. A movie that was originally to open in theaters a year ago, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Universal studios decided to delay the film a whole year serving as the first real “big” movie to kick off 2022. The 355 has star power somewhere with it’s star loaded cast. Unfortunately, Simon Kinberg’s direction brings too much lousiness to the action, too much conventionality with the tropes in the genre and really everything else. Its style is too choppy and it’s editing is almost too much to bare. This isn’t the way you want to start the year off.
The film focuses on a group of women, from different countries, who all join together to retrieve a top-secret weapon that falls in the hands of dangerous mercenaries.
He still needs more of a sample size to fully digest his direction, but Simon Kinberg is really unimpressive when he comes to be the person in charge as a director. His style feels at times generic, too basic and nothing special. With his previous film Dark Phoenix, he had an advantage with Bryan Singer’s take but did nothing with picking where Singer left off nor did he uniquely make it his own. With The 355, he has all the advantages in the world with it being an original property and a terrific ensemble of actresses. Just like Dark Phoenix, Kinberg’s direction is so horrifically flat and spiritless that it almost makes Dark Phoenix look like a better movie. The variety of action this movie has is incomprehensible that it never gives you sense to what’s happening on screen. Films like The Bourne movies or even the first Taken makes shaky cam effective, but The 355 devalues it’s fight choreography by moving the camera around like it’s stuck in a dryer.
When you have a cast that includes Jessica Chastian, Penélope Cruz and Lupita Nyong’o, it’s hard to imagine that someone would turn this down. These are Academy Award level actresses that have shown great range in celebrated and terrific movies. The one character in this movie that gets the most things to do, whereas everyone else is either just there to be there, poorly developed or just annoying side characters. Even the additions of Sebastian Stan and Édgar Ramírez, who are both talented actors, were boring characters, and with this being a spy movie, it’s direction doesn’t go down any new routes with their characters and other story aspects, hence why everything about this movie feels contrived.
The 355 is a poor way to kick 2022 for a new year of movie going. It had a great cast, a neat premise and really a slick visual style, but everything from the editing of the action, the poorly development of its characters and the direction of Simon Kinberg makes this movie a dud.
My grade for The 355: D
Zane's take at the Cinema's 