“The 355” (2022) is about a group of women who work(ed) for various spy agencies and join forces to retrieve technology that could destroy the world as we know it. Theresa Rebeck, who mostly writes for television series, but her film experience includes “Catwoman” (2004), cowrote the screenplay with director Simon Kinberg. It is Kinberg’s second time directing a film after “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” (2019), but his writing experience is more extensive: “xXx: State of the Union” (2005), “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” (2005), “X-Men: The Last Stand” (2006), “Sherlock Holmes”  (2009), “X-Men: Days of Future Past” (2014), “Fantastic Four” (2015) and “X-Men: Apocalypse” (2016). 

If you are thinking that most of those movies had great talent and potential, but were disappointing, you would be right, and “The 355” is no exception. I love and get why Jessica “I’m the motherfucker who found this place” Chastain would be excited to take this role as described. I love women kicking butt. The cast is talented. The production value was high.  I did feel as if we were jet setting around the world: Paris, London, Morocco, and Shanghai.

Kinsberg’s directing is dreadful. I saw many of the films that he directed, but “The 355” is memorable for how poorly the action is shot: lots of chaos cinema and cutting away instead of an elegant Fred Astaire appreciation for the fight choreography. The camera gets in the way of the performances even when focusing on a different kind of action. When Mace and Nick (Sebastian Stan) flirt, Kinsberg changes focus from the characters to the empty bed for what felt like five minutes. Thank you for the badass spy, but you are undercutting it by making her yearn to be part of a couple. I just met her, and she bores me. It was “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (2015) levels of disappointment over Black Widow’s darkest secret.

There is not a moment when Chastain’s role as CIA agent Mace is not a dreadful cliché. Her opening office banter with her partner Nick is so heavy-handed and awkward that I suffered from second-hand embarrassment. Mace was bad at her job and never watched movies otherwise she would have seen her plot twists coming a mile away. When Mace joins up with her international counterparts, she proves that American exceptionalism is fictional. She even gets the worse wigs. “The 355” would have been better with a different protagonist. While Chastain and Stan are great actors who deserve their success, they do not elevate awful roles. Rare talents can make shit shine despite itself and make a more powerful impact than their surroundings such as Charlize Theron or Michael Fassbender. A great actor can make a viewer praise them while simultaneously hating the film. 

“The 355” was not entirely hopeless. The other spies were more interesting than Mace and would have made better protagonists. Marie (Diane Kruger) was the most physically adept at her job. Kruger’s experience in “The Bridge” as a detective and Liam Neeson’s cab driver in “Unknown” (2011) served her well in this role. Fun fact: Kruger replaced Marion Cotillard. Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o), the former M16 agent, was the brains of the operation who could also throw down when necessary. How does that work? If you are not M16, then an agent would not automatically be inducted back in once they quit. Paperwork. Nyong’o’s Marvel experience as an action hero made her standout, and she had the most chemistry with each cast mate. A perfect traditional fish out of water protagonist would be Columbia’s Graciela (Penelope Cruz in a controversial casting choice and somewhere Sofia Vergara is pissed), a psychiatrist and family woman caught up in an unfamiliar world of intrigue. As the heart of the movie, the narrative would have an organic momentum for the audience to want to see her safe and with her family, but no it must be the American for reasons. Chastain is famous and the producer, but Cruz has been internationally famous since the nineties. Is it the accent, her foreignness, that takes her out of the running because I do not get it? Bingbing Fan appears very late in the film as a plot twist, so I do not want to spoil her agenda. She is the most well rounded. She has the connections, physical skills, smarts, and cardigan, but in a world where multilingual stunner Cruz does not get the lead, Fan does not stand a chance, which is not fair. Every time that Fan had to say something like “ancient Chinese herbs,” I hope that she got paid extra, especially because she is allegedly the Wesley Snipes of China. She is one of the highest paid actresses in the world.

“The 355” has an “Ocean’s Eight” vibe (2018) in that it cares more about women linking up more than the actual story when it should not have to be a choice. I would be more psyched about the women’s solidarity thing if it was not beset with stereotypes. Initially the women are antagonists before they are forced to work together. At the end of the movie, they are so awkward that a parting shawarma, though random, would relieve the tension. Also the assumption that all women are cool bugs me. No, they are not.

There is a point when “The 355” just does not make sense. (The following are not spoilers if you saw the preview.) How do the bad guys find them so quickly and get people in place to kill their loved ones in the denouement? Without the weapon, how do they hijack their computer network to show the live stream of the hostages? If they could put everything together so quickly, then how did the villains fall for the okey doke in the first place? Is there a rule that one character is not allowed to die because that last blow should have been fatal? Why is the team breaking up if they are still…….? I am fine with a mindless action movie, but all these plot flaws made the movie worse, and it would not have taken a lot of effort to make it credible. It is as if they gave up or cut out crucial scenes that tied everything together. 

“The 355” waits until the end of the film to throw away a line about the unknown historical person who inspired the title, an unnamed woman spy for the Patriots during the American Revolution (and someone needs to make a movie about her). Instead of using it as a hook to beg for a sequel, it feels like an afterthought. By that point in the film, a viewer just wants the movie to end so it would be easy to miss the reference. 

So why should you risk your life and financially support “The 355” instead of waiting for it to become available to stream on Peacock? Because bad action movies with men are part of business as usual, but bad action movies with women are rarer because studios do not believe that women make money even when they do, and the movies are good. You vote with your dollars, and to get a good one, we must support the bad ones. I hate it, but achieving greatness does not create gender equality. Mediocrity does.