Certificate: 12A (moderate threat, injury detail, fantasy violence). Running Time: 93 mins. UK Distributor: Sony
WHO’S IN IT?
Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (directors, writers, producers), Zainab Azizi, Deborah Liebling and Sam Raimi (producers), Chris Bacon and Danny Elfman (composers), Salvatore Totino (cinematographer), Josh Schaeffer (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A space pilot (Driver) finds himself stranded on prehistoric Earth…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON 65?
There isn’t much to really say about 65 – which, given that it’s a film featuring Adam Driver firing sci-fi guns at dinosaurs for ninety minutes, is one hell of a disappointment.
In theory, 65 – from directors/writers/producers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, best known for writing A Quiet Place – should be a fun B-movie throwback to the effects-heavy sci-fi blockbuster of the 50s and 60s, specifically the ones that were rife with Ray Harryhausen-style stop-motion which brought several prehistoric and fantastical creatures to life. Instead, it’s a thin and heavily derivative After Earth clone that trades genuine thrills for stock templates and underwhelming CGI (though by comparison, it is a lot easier to sit through than After Earth).
Driver is Mills, a space pilot who’s been charged with transporting a ship filled with cryogenic pods across the stars, the payment for which could help treat his ill daughter (Chloe Coleman). Naturally, the ship ends up crash-landing on a desolate planet, leaving only Mills and one other survivor – a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who was in one of the pods – to venture across the plains in search of an escape ship that will take them home. Here’s the twist, though: this is all taking place 65 million years in the past, so not only is the planet they arrive on none other than prehistoric, dino-ridden Earth, but Mills and Koa apparently belong to a human-like race of aliens that predated the ones on Earth by several centuries, one that’s so advanced that they have technology and weapons you’d see in your average futuristic sci-fi movie.
None of that is a spoiler, by the way; this is all laid out for the viewer before the main title even appears on the screen, and I can only imagine that it was this ten-page reveal that earned Beck and Woods the greenlight during their initial pitch meeting. However, it appears that the filmmakers didn’t think that hard beyond their logline, because the template that they ended up going with was exactly the kind of two-hander survival thriller that you’ve seen many, many times over. There really are no other surprises in this script, other than that there happen to be dinosaurs roaming about in the background, and it goes from point A to point B with hardly a step into unorthodox territory, with the characters being thinly-defined archetypes – namely the lowly hero with a tragic past, and the wide-eyed kid who often gets herself or both of them into serious danger – within an overly simple structure that’s even thinner.
Because it is such a Frankenstein’s Monster of a script, comprised of just about every trope from movies like this, from Jurassic Park to After Earth to even Beck and Woods’ own screenplay for A Quiet Place, 65 quickly shows how little it has in its own tank to propel itself along without the intrigue of its core concept. The film isn’t fleshed out enough to give these characters any defining personality, or to give the viewer a compelling enough reason to care whether or not they escape before the world basically ends (oh, I forgot to mention: the extinction-causing asteroid, the same one that caused Driver’s ship to crash in the first place, is also heading towards the planet as a ticking time-bomb for the two leads). Driver is fine in a part that easily could have been played by anybody, but you never really know enough about his character to get that invested in his straightforward arc. Not even the dynamic between him and Ariana Greenblatt seems to help, because although the two are on-screen together for most of the movie, there is a distinct language barrier – Greenblatt’s Koa does not seem to speak or understand any English – that prevents them from truly getting to know each other and form a meaningful bond that is believable enough to root for.
As for the Driver-on-dinosaur action, it is underwhelmingly tame. In addition to the effects not being particularly good (though I’ll give the movie a pass on that one, because they didn’t have a Jurassic World-level budget to work under), the designs of these dinosaurs look oddly cartoonish, with big bulbous eyes and exaggerated body builds as though it were a live-action remake of The Land Before Time, which greatly reduces their intimidation levels. Many of the action sequences where Driver is either shooting at them or running away from them are shot and paced with a noticeable lack of urgency, which makes them surprisingly dull to watch and far from the fun-filled adventure you’d both expect and want from a film like this.
What could have been an entertaining throwback sci-fi adventure is instead a hollow and extremely derivative survival thriller that just happens to have Adam Driver shooting at dinosaurs every now and then, but even that is far less fun than it sounds.
SO, TO SUM UP…
65 is a hollow and extremely derivative sci-fi thriller that wastes a potentially fun concept, as well as the talents of Adam Driver, with stock writing and underwhelming Driver-on-dinosaur action.
65 is now showing in cinemas nationwide – click here to find a screening near you!
