The 355 is the girlboss thriller the world really doesn’t need right now
Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong'o, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, and Bingbing Fan star in Simon Kinberg's dud of a spy movie
Film Reviews Girlboss
It sounds like to the setup to a joke: How do you make a movie starring Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, and Diane Kruger into a dud? Through the same phenomenon that brought the world SoulCycle, that’s how. The “girlboss” wave of the mid-2010s celebrated tough-minded, take-no-shit women who grabbed the world by the balls and gave them a twist, presenting a gender-swapped version of liberal capitalism as the solution to that system’s many problems. Universal’s new thriller The 355 believes similarly: In this film, the CIA and its ilk are presented as corrupt dinosaurs—unless it’s a badass chick pulling the strings. Yes, girl! Work that surveillance state!
Released the same week that medical girlboss Elizabeth Holmes was found guilty of fraud, the schtick is feeling more than a little tired in The 355. Perhaps the pandemic has made us a little more sensitive to the interconnected nature of all things, making a woman driven by myopic self-interest, whether she be venture capitalist or CIA agent, seem a little less aspirational. Of course, that’s an optimistic view. The truth is that, like any cultural phenomenon, the action-movie version of female empowerment has been worn out through sheer repetition. In a spy thriller, a woman who drinks her whiskey neat—girlbosses never dilute—and kicks men in the face wearing a stacked heel has become as much of a cliché as the womanizing secret agent. And The 355 does nothing to complicate, deconstruct, or refresh that cliché.
Chastain stars as Mason “Mace” Brown, a less conflicted version of her character from Zero Dark Thirty. (At one point, Mace waxes nostalgic about the moral clarity of the Global War on Terrorism. Later on, she tells a funny story about hitting a cow with her car in Pakistan.) At the beginning of the film, Mace fumbles a mission to retrieve a hard drive that can do all the vague, catastrophic things hard drives can do in spy movies. In the ensuing foot chase through the streets of Paris, Mace’s partner Nick (Sebastian Stan) proves himself useless, and Mace chases her opponent, later revealed to be German superspy Marie (Diane Kruger), down into a Metro tunnel for a reasonably thrilling showdown.
But Nick is killed in the aftermath, and a flashback sequence lit like an alien abduction soon reveals that Mace’s feelings for her colleague were more than professional. Fast forward a few scenes, and Mace has gone rogue with the tacit approval of her boss, who knows she’ll do her own thing no matter what he tells her. There’s a lot of inconsequential talk about investigations and sanctions and going on the run, but Mace never doubts that she’s one of the “good guys,” and neither does the movie. Yaas, queen! Rock that black site!
A remarkably similar scene also plays out in German, as we discover that Marie’s defiant attitude stems from childhood trauma. In fact, each of the women Mace pulls in to her mission over the course of this film’s plodding 124-minute runtime has some kind of damage: Khadijah (Nyong’o), the British tech wizard, is “out of the game” and has to be pulled back in for “one last job.” Graciela (Cruz), a Colombian therapist who’s caught up in all this through machinations even the movie doesn’t fully understand, has a husband and kids back home. Chinese agent Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan), meanwhile, comes in too late for such a motivation. But she is proficient in “ancient Chinese herbs.”
There’s a lot of talk about the personal stakes of “the job” in The 355, a theme more in line with the superhero movies director Simon Kinberg usually makes than a straightforward espionage thriller like this one. The Bourne movies hover in the background throughout—even the film’s poster declares that it’s “from the studio that brought you Jason Bourne.” And Kinberg makes extensive use of those films’ most famous stylistic flourish, shaking the camera like the action scenes were filmed on a rickety trolley car. But while a sprinkling of handheld forced perspective shots add visual interest, overall the action is as sloppy as the characters’ spy craft. A tightly wound spring, this movie is not.
Mostly, though, the feeling of The 355 is like watching kids play pretend. That’s partially because of the film’s oversimplified “good guy/bad guy” moral binary, as well as the eye-rolling clumsiness of the dialogue and the stock globetrotting locations. (This movie has scenes at a drug lord’s jungle compound, a bustling Middle Eastern market, and a swank Shanghai skyscraper. Put that on your spy-movie bingo card.) But there’s also a lack of chemistry between the leads, and a school-play stiffness to the performances—which is odd, given that there are multiple Oscar winners in the cast.
It’s easy to understand why an actor might want to be in a movie like this one: It looks fun as all get out to bark out lines like “We’re spies, asshole!” and do cool flips in a black turtleneck. But, as so often happens, an enjoyable day’s work on set doesn’t translate into an entertaining movie. On screen, as in real life, simply dropping a woman into the same old role isn’t enough to truly change the game.
370 Comments
But does anyone say, “Yaaaas, kween!”?
Ilana Glazer does; but she doesn’t seem to be in this.
Gays of a certain age.
Great period piece drama title:
Gays of A Certain AgeStarring Tom Holland and Theo Van Der Snoot and Henry Cavill as his footman Giovanni. Set in 19th century Italy, the two men reminisce how they met and their romance blossomed with the help of their other queer friends and lady friends.
Obligatory (seriously, someone make this!!)
Elizabeth II’s new butler, who has a ridiculous Dutch accent. “Your Majesty” is the more usual form of address, but he’s learning.
Black women used to. Then white people, notably white women, took it.Then white men, and “cool girls” who strive for their approval, started using it to mock women because they still haven’t worked through their own mommy issues.
Have fun going deaf from firing machine guns in an enclosed space without ear protection.
That’s what the “ancient Chinese herbs,” are for.
I thought they were for making you forget what a cruddy movie you’re watching.
We need more Calgon!
Deep cut there.
I’m old.
Ancient Chinese herbs, huh?
See you in hell ladies, if you can even hear it!
Hell is other phonemes.
Ladies go to Lady Hell, where it’s always 67 degrees, there is only one bathroom stall, the tampon machine is always broken, a glass ceiling view of heaven and no matter how much wine you drink you never get drunk.
Oh god what a horrible fate. Especially the drinking part.
Mawp… mawp…
Hah, I burst out laughing. Good reference.
I semi-auto snickered.
The review also mentions turtlenecks, or, as I think they’re known in the spy game, tactlenecks.
found the nitpicker
I went shooting in the desert a few years back, and we fucked up and only brought enough ear plugs for two people. I decided to shoot one shotgun slug without them just to gauge how loud it was… that was a mistake. This was outside where the noise dispersed quickly.Ever since then, I cringe when I see movie gun fights in small spaces.
The hearing in my right ear is still muffled from when I was 10 and a kid shot a .38 off near my ear. Funny thing is, I was backing up as he did it so I would have been dead as well were it not for the other kid in front of me pulling me toward him as he realized what was happening behind me.
“You know, we’re not so different, you and I.”“What?”“I said, we’re not so diff-”“What?”“WE’RE! NOT! SO! DIFFERENT! YOU! AND! I!”“Am I wary of dissident UN spies? I suppose, I’ve never really thought about it.”
I’m hearing all of this in Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry’s voices. “WE’RE NOT! SO DIFFERENT! YOU AND I!”“AM I HORATIO NELSON?”“That doesn’t even sound like ‘we’re not so different, you and I’…”“HORIATO NELSON IS NOT SO DIFFERENT FROM YOU AND I?! YOU’RE BABBLING!”
The porn parody is gonna be awesome.
To be obviously titled “The 569″
I was thinking The 355…..
…OF COCK!
Starring, you guessed it, Franny Stallone.
Will Emma Stone play the Chinese spy?
Or spell it out for ‘The Three-Titty-Five’.
I want an arthouse adult spy thriller on the level of Bernadette or Blue is The Warmest Color. But keep all the stars above the same.
Especially if they keep the actors from the original.
Sorry, but you’ve got two white gunslingers and no Asian. You’ll have to go back and try again.
Sorry, but you’ve got two white gunslingers and no Asian. You’ll have to go back and try again.
Look like you tried again with that comment and see where that got us!
how do it do that?!
This movie almost sounds like it was cast by whether the actors’ names—Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, and Bingbing Fan—made it clear that this was a real Captain Planet/United Color of Benetton multiculti affair.
I mean, one of the characters is specifically Chinese and another is specifically Colombian, so that’s some guaranteed diversity right there.
when nyong’o plays the colombian and cruz plays the brit, then we’ll know we have defeated racism.
With our powers combined, we are the amoral global surveillance apparatus!
Im pretty sure Bingbing Fan is Asian.
Well then give her a damn machine gun.
Someone’s watched Machine Girl.
To be faaaaaaaaaaaaaair, there are four photos in the article and Bingbing is only in the smallest one and Rife does point out that she is an underdeveloped latecomer in the movie.
Kind of funny how none of these girl boss movies end up being good or making any money.
Simon Kinberg has always sucked. He broke in with Mr and Mrs Smith, which was not actually remotely good, but became famous due to the off-screen shenanegins of its leads.Since then, he’s been foisted onto countless big franchise properties and has brought nothing new to the table. Please end this guy’s career the way it began, with a shitty, derivative, wanna-be spy actioner. Thank you.
Aside from working on Star Wars Rebels, holy shit is his IMDB a stink bomb.
I don’t understand the “C level” directors/writers who have such steady careers.
wow would you look at that, his dad was a producer and screenwriter. what a shocker.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jud_Kinberg
Normally I’d cry nepotism, but I doubt telling people your dad produced The Magus would open any doors.
it’s easy to be snarky but, nah, it is nepotism and the doors were open. i’m sure kinberg has worked hard, but even having the opportunity to be able to work hard in the industry is a privilege. like, ben stiller worked hard to get where he is but jerry stiller being his dad helped no matter how you slice it.
You’d be surprised. And it’s rarely that direct, but more like: a couple guys that were friends with or given breaks by dad then had their own later success and return the favor.
Another example of a mediocre white guy being allowed to fail upwards, perhaps?
There are days where I, a man who has no idea where to place a comma, thinks that once you “make it” as a screen writer there’s not much that can get you out.
A perfect example.
either that or some form of money laundering/tax loophole
stop bringing his skin color in here. or do you have ANY proof it got anything to do with it apart from your prejudice?
Exactly. Why do these hacks keep getting work? Apparently, his work on Rebels was minimal.
Rebels was horrible anyway
As long as your films stay under budget and reliably make a bit of money, a complete lack of taste or talent is no impediment to a long and uninterrupted career as a maker of nearly-direct-to-streaming turd piles.
Exactly this.
I think he only started directing relatively recently.
Rebels isn’t good though
“The numbers say this is a 4 quarter pic and if we spend $35mil + marketing we should have a solid $3-400mil b.o. We have X, Y, and Z for leads. Standard action something or other. Lady spies? Who give’s a shit? Who’s free than can get this out on time and on budget and won’t give me any grief?”“This guy…”“Great. Have it wrapped by August. Don’t call me unless something burns down or dies.”
Has Kinberg ever gone seriously overbudget or run seriously late on a movie? If not, he’s exactly the kind of director Hollywood is comfortable with — a modestly-talented hack who brings his movies in on time and on/under budget.
It’s always been that way — Howard Hawks and Orson Welles are both brilliant directors, but Hawks managed to work within the studio system, while Welles tried to warp it to fit his ambitions…and ended up with a lot of admirers in Hollywood, but damned few who would bankroll him.
Yo, but he’s Brown Class of 1995. Generation X, represent! Imet him at a Brown reunion. Very nice guy.Admittedly, I think the best he did was sketch the plots for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 (most of which was thrown out), and he produced Logan, the best superhero movie from last decade.
Mr and Mrs Smith at least had the good sense to base itself almost entirely on Pitt’s and Jolie’s chemistry. I don’t think it’s an awful movie, but it certainly did nothing to suggest any particular talent from its writer.
It’s got a hacky premise recycled from Prizzi’s Honor and….nothing else. At least on the page. The actors are who they are.
A sprinkling of Vince Vaughn at the height of his powers helped, as well.
I can imagine the pitch.“Okay, so it’s Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie-”“Sold!”“Uh, don’t you want to hear the rest.”“Not really.”
I watched it for the first time last year. It was…. fine? Very forgettable.
I watched Mr. & Mrs. Smith not too long ago*, and it was better than I expected it to be. So Kinberg went downhill from there.
* https://thepopculturists.blogspot.com/2021/01/this-weekend-in-pop-culture-january-1-3.html#comment-5210403823
Hey Mr. and Mrs. Smith was a fun romp!
I was going to say that that was a little harsh, but then I looked at his filmography and realized that, in addition to doing Dark Phoenix, he co-wrote X3, which means that he managed to screw up one of the best and most important X-Men story adaptations twice.
I honestly don’t understand a world in which someone can make a movie like “X-Men: Dark Phoenix” and someone looked at that and decided he would be a good director for their movie, too. I know, I know – he’s a white male with industry connections – but there have got to be hundreds or even thousands of white men with industry connections out there. How does this guy keep getting work?
Well, he’s very tall. I’m sure that helps.
Everyone have answered quite aptly.
Everytime his name popping up connected to a project, I’m always groaning and thinking the same thing as you.
“You better give me this job. I have compromising pictures of Harvey Weinstein.”“How is that a threat? He’s already disgraced and in prison.”“I’m going to make you look at them!”“You sick bastard, you win.”
Given that the only reason this movie exists is because Chastain thought it would be cool to get a bunch of highly talented actresses together to kick some ass in a big espionage action-thriller (like men get to do all the time), I will never understand why she didn’t go straight for Kathryn Bigelow or Mimi Leder or Michelle MacLaren or someone of that ilk to direct.Even if they did and those turned the job down, why the fuck would they hire someone as mediocre as Kinberg over… well, over literally any woman who’s managed to forge a career in Hollywood and shown the slightest interest in action? FFS, this was filming at the same time as Gina Prince-Bythewood (who I don’t imagine anyone had pegged as an action director previously) was making The Old Guard, and that worked out pretty damn well.
I guess because normal people usually think people can always improve upon themselves. Hell, if everyone was that cynical, the Russo brothers’ career would’ve ended with You, Me, and Dupree.
“The last time you were in charge of a movie it was hot garbage, but practice makes perfect and you must have learned your lessons. Here, take my $100 million and try again!”Yeah, I’m sure that was it. No doubt Brett Ratner has heard a variation of that speech a time or two. Much better to keep recycling failed auteurs whose only good movies are in the “producer” section of their IMDB than take a chance on someone new, or different, or talented.
Yeah, still gotta disagree. That mindset would mean directors like Chloe Zhao would stop getting work after Eternals became the worst-reviewed MCU movie, and that’s just nonsense. Y’all need to stop thinking capeshit is the end all be all.
He’s actually managed to kill the X-Men franchise twice. How on Earth do you get two shots at the Dark Phoenix saga and shit the bed both times?
I always assumed that Chris Claremont slept with his mom and this was his revenge.
“But Simon, you just can’t understand how wild Comic-Con was back in those days!”
Well, Doug Liman was behind the lens doing all the heavy lifting. That’s why.
Simon Kinberg behind the lens? Yeah, I can smell that shart from miles away. He is TV show level director stuck forever in the noughties style of directing.
def just assumed this was a netflix movie of the week. cannot imagine how badly this is gonna bomb.
But this is exactly why Chastain went to Juilliard in the first place!
why isn’t Sasha Bank in this she soooo hawt and can kick asszz in the reeelz
I’ve always called bullshit on movies like this being viewed as “female empowerment,” as if the pivotal way women are being held down in the world is that they’re not allowed to kick people in the face and shoot them the way men do. Drew Barrymore wouldn’t let go of it when she was behind those godawful “Charlie’s Angels” movies.
The other big eye roll in many of these female action movies that kill them is the fact that the women are presented with absolutely no flaws and are mary sues, like you are not allowed to show a woman get her butt kicked by a guy or have flaws. Even the new James Bond movies present him as “old” and with flaws. It drains all suspense and believability out of these movies and if you want to “really” have female lead tom cruise movies or jason bourne movies, they just have to learn to let this mistaken belief go and embrace that this is not 1990 anymore and these movies are very common now, and “guy” led action movies in 2021 also do not present their leads like it is 1990 anymore either.
The empowerment comes from women in Hollywood being able to make films where they’re seen as action stars alongside their male counterparts.People get so stupid and act like *this* is the only way empowerment will come to Hollywood as if these kinds of films don’t help bankroll that other stuff. No different than how Disney pumps out Marvel sequels and uses the profits to roll out Encanto, Luca, Coco, etc etc etc.
Tangentially, I actually thought the most recent Charlies Angels reboot was way more fun and layered than it had any right to be.
Wow, Xi finally let Fan Bingbing leave her house? Good for her! Hopefully she can revive her career after running afoul of the CCP.
This is an excellent reminder that I can just watch Haywire again.
Yeah as odious as Gina Carano has become that movie is still pretty fantastic despite her leaden performance.
Say what you will about Carano’s terrible acting (started out shockingly bad, eventually clawed her way up to “kinda meh”) and her politics (started out meh, clawed her way down to shockingly bad), but as an action star she had the absolutely transcendent quality of looking like someone who, if they punched you, you would actively regret being punched by.
I was watching The Mandalorian again last weekend and was disappointed to be reminded she’s in a few episodes.
I actually have nothing against Carano (I very strongly believe in separating the art from the artist), but Haywire wasn’t enjoyable for me. Way too much Gina Carano not fighting, way too little Gina Carano fighting. The entire movie was a showcase for her martial arts skills, and 90+% was something other than that. I like her as a cinematic ass-kicker, but man was she bad at everything else in that.A good version of Haywire would have been either something like The Raid where it’s almost entirely nonstop action, or something like a Chuck Norris movie where Carano’s character was short on words but long on roundhouse kicks. (The heavy lifting for dialogue and emoting would be given to the supporting cast).
Chuck Norris, really? Cynthia Rothrock is right there!
That Cynthia Rothrock has not been cast in one of the actual Expendables films (as opposed to the dreadful Mercenaries) is a goddamn crime.(Disclaimer: the Expendables films are also dreadful. But still.)
I’ve seen like a dozen Chuck Norris movies and zero Cynthia Rothrock movies. The best known example of ‘good at punching bad at acting’ actor is Chuck Norris so that’s the example I went with.
She was so much cooler then Chuck Norris and I will never apologize.
She’s too busy baking cookies in Santa’s Summer House.
I mean, this is just Simon Kinberg stealing Uma Thurman’s Fox Force Five spiel from Pulp Fiction, right? We’re so reboot-crazy we’re now rebooting fictional failed pilots!
Well, according to deep Tarantino lore and internet weirdos like me, Fox Force Five MIGHT actually be Kill Bill and the events of Kill Bill are just a movie that Uma’s character from Pulp Fiction acted in.
I’m pretty sure Uma/Tarantino stole the idea for Fox Force Five from Panther Squad.
Dammit, Zwing, you stole my bit!
Yeah, well you stole it from Steve Allen.
Yeah well I know it because I SOLD IT TO YOU!
Which was itself basically Charlie’s Angels…
So they’re pretending that Sebastian Stan’s character dies early in the movie. Good lord!Ok, first of all, you wouldn’t cast a name like that unless he was faking his own death and was going to be revealed as the mastermind behind the whole thing at the beginning of the third act. But, even worse, THEY SHOW THE TEAM CONFRONTING HIM IN THE TRAILER! If you can’t even pretend like the audience won’t see your shitty twist coming from a million miles away, why bother? But I guess that’s my question about this entire movie. Just… why?
Widows was how many years ago? God this movie is just not trying.
Sometimes a film’s progression is its own spoiler!
Yeah, when your big twist was handled better by “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” you may want to rethink your storytelling procedures.
Spy handled it better. It also made Melissa McCarthy look competent, Jason Statham is hilarious, Rose Byrne is wonderful and the rest of the cast is really good as well.
Yes, girl! Work that surveillance state! Yaas, queen! Rock that black site!Is it kinda weird that I read those in Jonathan Van Ness’ voice?
Or Andy Cohen.Or Andy Dick. Why is Andy Dick not in this movie!?
There’s no dicks in the 355.
If the ending was Andy Dick getting mowed down Robocop style I’d maybe watch it.
A robot played by Jon Lovitz, a man who has had real life experience in giving Dick a beat down (phrasing).
I read it in Katie’s voice, which made it incredibly awkward to see her appropriating black vernacular as an insult towards fellow women.It’s no different than how white Republicans took “woke” from the black community and have turned it in to a slur against any attempt to address bias.
Not only is it not weird, but I’m sure this movie would be improved by having JVN in every scene commenting on the action with no explanation.
It is not if, like me, you have started watching Queer Eye S6. There’s a “Yaas, Queen” song in it. Sung by a person who pulls it off. It stuck with me, too.
All the characters have some kind of “damage” like…[checks notes] having children, enjoying their life, and [checks notes again]…nothing?
So if movies like this get this sort of response, why the hell are people clamoring for James Bond to be a woman? SlBetween this and The King’s Man it sounds like it’s the spy genre itself that’s a problem.I’m all for examining problematic premises but by the rate we are going, it seems the only action movies we will be allowed to like will be 90 minutes of slaughtering white male C suite executives.
There’s clearly a gap between the desired product and it’s execution; the people want to see a female 007, but the studio gives us girlboss 007.
Ehhh… Twitter wants to see a female 007. People just want a fun 007 movie.
Is “No Time To Die” fun? Because the look on Craig’s face in every ad for the movie tells me “no”.
There is a very fun sequence in Cuba. That’s about it.
I enjoyed the whole movie but some of the story didn’t really make sense. As Killa K said, there’s a 20-25 minute sequence in Cuba that’s pure fun and makes the movie worthwhile IMO. Overall I’d rate it a 7/10.
That’s just his Resting Craig Face.
Lol.I mean, I don’t expect him to be grinning as he’s a Super Secret Spy but I just get this “this is my last Bond movie, and I just want to get through it and be done with it” vibe from him. Whoever the next Bond is, I want them to want to be in the role.
I have long thought that there needed to be a couple of “fun Bond” movies between “Quantum of Solace” and “Spyfall” where Daniel Craig’s Bond could’ve been enjoying the whole “being a superspy” thing. Instead, there was a weird jump from “just starting out” to “worn out and over the hill” that was jarring. (It didn’t help that the behind-the-scenes IP stuff stalled production for years.)
Maybe that’s going to be the next iteration of Bond, one that’s heavier on the winking, Roger Moore type of performance. Or maybe not like Moore, but still very much a ‘being a globe-trotting superspy is exciting and fun’ as a reaction to the ‘being a globe-trotting superspy because I’m a broken alcoholic sociopath’.
Twitter wants Twitter to want to see a female 007.
The people does not want a female 007.
Imma put in my plug for Atomic Blonde. The story and dialogue barely makes sense, but it hits all the marks that I look for in a Bond-esque spy thriller complete with stylish outfits and visuals. I like Craig’s action scenes, but Charlize Theron is just amazing. It’s got a couple of my favorite on-screen fights.
I am not clamoring for a female James Bond so please don’t include me in this narrative 🤣I really enjoyed *Old Guard* and it avoids many of the normal spy movie pitfalls by being more of a superhero story.
I mean, one way to avoid genre trappings is to not be a film in that genre…yes.
Movies like this exist so women can get action roles, prove they can do it, and hopefully get picked up for bigger/better projects.Because studios aren’t as willing to take risks on women in action roles (however good looking) as they are with men.So these four star in a fairly rote spy thriller/action film, get some attention, and now hopefully casting directors at the big studios start considering them for better stuff.
The first Kingsman is slaughtering black male villain though.
So if movies like this get this sort of response, why the hell are people clamoring for James Bond to be a woman? You expect consistency from people who are obsessed with turning everything into power dynamics with very specific villains at the top of every pyramid?Pssssssssh.
I mean if Ana De Armis was the new Bond and was as fun as her one scene in No Time to Die I’d love that. But odds are the writers would go the girl boss route.
Because people know that Bond movies will keep getting made, with decent budgets, and they want to see more diverse A-List movies. It’s not an absurd or worthless hope. I think there’s also a glimmer of hope that shaking up the formula might make for a better Bond movie, but I agree with you that there are some facile assumptions in that belief that history hasn’t borne out.
“People” are a fairly large group, which can contain more than one opinion. Also “the only action movies we will be allowed to make” is a hilarious statement, since it implies that you’re part of a group of people who makes action movies, and you’re concerned about internet commenters and movie reviewers granting you permission to make them.
the only action movies we will be allowed to like will be 90 minutes of slaughtering white male C suite executivestake_my_money.jpeg
Content of the actual movie aside, this might be the worst title for a movie I’ve ever seen. 1) What does 355 mean? If I’m looking at movie listings, it means nothing to me. It inspires nothing. Even pairing it with an image of women with guns… are they bad guys? Is 355 an area code? Is it a police code? A secret organization? Are there three hundred and fifty five of these?2) How is one supposed to read “355″ without hearing it first? Is it three-fifty-five? Three hundred and fifty five? Nope! Its the Three-Five-Five… This is why in screenwriting we don’t just write numbers, we spell out the words, because there’s multiple ways to say longer numbers…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_355sure, most people might not know that off the top of their heads, but hopefully anyone curious enough would take time for a quick Google search and answer.
That’s really cool, I never knew that. Cool idea to call them that, no beef there, it’s just a bad title since 99% of film goers aren’t going to know that connection.
fair, fair. hopefully there’s some sort of connection outlined in the film, for those who would forget to look it up (or simply not want to)
I would literally never wikipedia the title of a movie to see if it has some meaning I don’t understand while trying to decide what movie to go see (during rising covid numbers)… but either way, It sure as fuck wouldn’t be this.
I’m not sure if I like it for the historical reference, or hate it for the fact that, according to that link, the movie’s title reference could probably just be code for ‘Lady Spies’.
That reference is cool, but “The 355″ is still an awful title. The number needs a word that’s not an article in front of it: “Agent” or “Codename” or something. As it stands, you see the five stars and just think “They’re 350 short!”
I fully agree. Even with context and historical understanding, the title is ass. It may as well be called Girl Boss Spies or as Inspector Hammer said, Lady Spies.
I kind of like the reference, but also find it amusing. Let’s make a movie about spies from around the world working together, but give it a name from US history. America! But I agree, it’s a bad title.
I was really hoping the movie was about the character from Y: The Last Man.
sure, most people might not know that off the top of their heads, but hopefully anyone curious enough would take time for a quick Google search and answer. Well, that’s kind of the thing, most people don’t see a movie title that’s just numbers and think, “I wonder if that has some historical significance. Maybe I should spend some time with Wikipedia to find out.” People don’t have the brain space for that, they just go, “Huh, numbers.” I mean, even “Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever” was very clear in its suggestion that this is going to be a stupid fucking movie.
Its a historical reference to a woman far more interesting then this movie. I feel bad she’s even vaguely attached to the title.
3 = tits
5 = assTHETITSASSASS
Tree-fitty-five?!Tree-fitty-five…
A knew that damn Loch Ness monster was behind this movie!
Explaining the reference is basically the first thing Jessica Chastain says in the trailer because they know it’s absolute nonsense as much as anybody.
Interestingly, the actual movie waits until the last few minutes to do it.
Worse, there have already been two popular TV shows called “The 100″ and “The 4400″ that were both dark sci-fi dramas. I understand wanting to reference Agent 355, but couldn’t they have called it “Agency 355″ or something to at least let us know it’s a spy film?
The airplane movie crowd is the new market inefficiency.
how are the costumes tho? give me looks!
can we talk about this instead?
Welp, there it goes: “The AV Club” finally and completely joins Deadspin in being an entirely zombie property. I mean not that it wasn’t 90% of the way there already.
Kinja was just the first nail.
What a shitty thing to do, but I expect nothing less given the company.I also never understood these requirements from media companies either. It’s 2022 now and the internet is everywhere. A person in an empty field in Kansas could get a link to a screener and then write a review. Making everyone go to LA or NY is just paying for expensive office space.
Somebody really likes tracking how often their employees take bathroom breaks. It’s a useless middle manager power flex. That’s all.
It makes no financial sense to require writers to operate out of a single office space, rather than working much more cheaply from home, so it’s got to be about control. Remote workers cannot be subjected to constant surveillance, and that sends some managers – the really, really bad ones – into a tailspin.
That’s exactly it. The only people that couldn’t wait to get back to the office when stay at home orders came out in 2020 were management who realized the existence of their positions was predicated on breathing down the necks of their subordinates. There is zero reason for a blog writer to need to work in an office space in 2022
i’m guessing they’re trying to force out the older staff to replace them with someone cheaper
“Writing is a passion, for passionate people – if you just want to get paid, take your ass to McDonalds.”
Yeah, that was clear when they issued the Los Angeles ultimatum, with moving expenses that wouldn’t cover a move from Chicago to Evansville, much less a move to one of the pricier cities in the U.S.
I’d imagine it has little to do with that – it’s just a way to cut costs. Management probably wanted to lay people off, but instead, you just give an ultimatum expecting that the bulk of people will not be able to comply, so they quit. They quit instead of being laid off, you don’t owe any unemployment/severance. And you can hire a cheaper/more limited staff after, so you save money at both ends. It’s a pretty shitty, underhanded thing to do, rather than just being above board and laying people off.
On the other hand, that potential cheaper staff (being, presumably, pop culture-aware types) would likely be aware of what G/O’s doing/done to the current place and probably wouldn’t want to work for such a shitty regime. So G/O may find it difficult to find actually qualified people. Assuming, of course, they give a shit about that, which, uh….
I imagine it’s also a way to ice out the few remaining members of the original Onion Union. They probably can’t fire them for completely spurious reasons, and they don’t want to keep employees they have to treat even somewhat humanely.
People are quitting in droves because their employers are curtailing work-from-home, and G/O Media wants to not only make everyone show up at an office, but show up at an office 2,000 miles away.I don’t think this was thought through very well.
G/O didn’t think something out? You don’t say.
They know that. This is 100% G/O media attempting to break the union.If the NRLB gets involved they’ll probably just shutter the site.
Exactly, Drew! That’s even if you think you won’t be sending your staff home for weeks or months on end as the latest COVID-19 variant mutates among the unvaccinated/unmasked hordes so we all have to wear biohazard suits just to go grocery shopping.
Why most of the staff isn’t remote is beyond me — and before somebody says “A/V Content”, I have a $90 Webcam that shoots 1080p at 30 fps, a Blue Snowball Ice Mic that cost $45, and a $20 green screen sheet, along with far more LED lights than I need to shoot all the video content an employer could want.
I will bet that all of us by now have a similar setup at our desks….
Based on the fact that 90% of the articles on the front page are slideshows, I’m guessing G/O Media doesn’t understand the media landscape either.
“Oh, and remember: next Friday is Hawaiian Shirt Day!”
“-you stupid dolphins!”lol
“Aloha shirt” not “Hawaiian shirt” you insensitive cad! 🙂
Solidarity with AV Club writers!
Yeah the good ones that used to write here before it turned all sickly
Welp, even if it never reached the heights of the AVC of the Elder Days, it was fun while it lasted.
As if AV Club wasn’t already a shambling zombie operation
Comments like this are the true heroes of this situation. The people bold enough to say, “I didn’t care anyway.”
@AA Dowd – if you and a bunch of current/former AVClub writers end up spinning off to your own new website, I would happily follow.
The Dissolve 2.0!!!!
We can call it… The Dissolve! Wait, shit…
Only if they ban slideshows.
Tobias et al tried that with The Dissolve, which I think was funded by Pitchfork. It ran a year or so and tanked. Ad supported didn’t generate the right clicks. Bummer, too because they were doing really good work.
The site is still up. There’s some good reading.http://thedissolve.com
The Dissolve’s sad failure makes for an interesting contrast with Defector, which at least so far has managed the impressive trick of importing most of the old Deadspin’s audience, and apparently making the co-op organization model and subscription funding work — they even monetized being able to comment, and people pay happily.I wonder if they’d like to branch out into movie and TV writing…
Shit, if you got Tobias and Tasha Robinson and Dowd and Rife and maybe Rabin would pop in now and then? I might actually put money to that.
The real question being: Is ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER included in the package? “Yes” = instant 1 year prepaid subscription from me.
So. Um. I don’t want to get you too excited because it doesn’t happen often, but ZODIAC MOTHERFUCKER is already an occasional Defector comment thread participant. The man is nothing if not a sports fan.
If I had even the *slightest* interest in sports that might have been enough to persuade me.
Seriously guys. Someone here contact Drew, call up Keith Phipps, and get this thing rolling.
I think you mean YES OWNAGE
YES YES YESI am all in for the AV section of the Defector.
Yeah, now that I’ve said it, I really just want to know who to hand my money to.
In the Keith Phipps era they actually tried that — it was called The Dissolve. It didn’t last long, unfortunately.
So they’ve finally decided to slit the AVClub’s throat and let it bleed out.
Fells more like a gutshot to me.
Not many, I suspect.
I don’t think they realize how many readers they’re going to lose when this happens.
They don’t care about the readers, what they want is an established property to sell off for large profits. They are selling brand names, not an editorial philosophy or a readership.
I have a feeling they’re going to change to an all-TikTok format or some godawful shit
Doesn’t look good for AVClub’s long term health….
Considering that I’m still annoyed about what happened to TWoP, this is maddening.
Well that’s horrible.
So shitty! I’ve been hanging out here a long time, and amidst all the upheaval of the past several years, Dowd has remained one of the reasons to keep coming back. What an underhanded, slimy way to treat – not just a valued and valuable employee – but just a human being generally. Fucking cretins.
So, uh, anyone found a satisfying AV Club replacement? Kinda seems like any remnants of what I liked about this site are about to go away.
Yeah, if I could get my pop culture fix somewhere else I would be out of here in a heartbeat. The way they’re treating the last few remaining writers who made the AV Club what it once was is appalling. The site is already a shell of its former self, and after this I can’t see how it can become anything but a rotting corpse.
I’d love to transfer a handful of the writers and the majority of the commentariat somewhere else to restore AVC to its former glory.
Do you guys want to come hang at my house? I have snacks.
A couple of the OG AVC writers post on The Verge’s pop culture section articles sometimes, but the comments section there is a ghost town comparatively.
a lot of us mass exodus’d years ago to
https://the-avocado.org/Much
more commenter based, so if you’re looking for that it’s a solid community with a lot of old names/faces
Or, there’s the good one!https://tolerabilityindex.freeforums.net/
a lot of us mass exodus’d years ago to
https://the-avocado.org/Much more commenter based, which I find is a big plus. They also suffer no fools, and have pretty strict rules, so it’s troll-free, but you also have to think twice yourself before posting. Also a plus (mostly).
Probably the best option for me. Still going to be sad to lose a centralized source for content from the writers I do still enjoy here. Might just have to break and actually start a Twitter account I guess :/
Everything good is beyond stupid paywalls.
Sadly, not. Tasha Robinson is writing for Polygon, though, and I found myself visiting that site more and more often lately — especially for the non-gaming-related articles. (There are just a small part of the site, but the quality is often really good.)
Tasha is an editor at Polygon, which means not only does she write some of her own stuff, she has her own stable of freelancers, which used to include AVC’s own Roxana Hadadi (who now has a staff job at Vulture!) and still includes folks like Noel Murray and, less excitingly, me.
You are right, of course — sorry that I was so imprecise. As I said, it’s only recently that I started to visit Polygon more regularly — I’m not sure that I have already come across one of your articles there. But that would honestly be reason for excitement!
I really think that all of you — Dowd, Katie, Mike, you, Tom, Caroline, Mike, the remains of Ignatyi (I hope I’m not forgetting someone) made collectively what’s surely among the finest film coverage on the web.What’s more, it often felt like it was you who kept the lights on when it already had gotten darker and darker in the rest of the AV Clubhouse.
That’s why it’s so very frustrating, even to me as a reader, to see how you all are treated. But it’s also why I really hope that you will find a better virtual home soon, and why I’ll try to follow your writing wherever it might be published in the future.
Oh, no, I didn’t mean to ding you for being imprecise! I just know it’s not always clear from bylines and stuff what people’s jobs are, so I wanted to give some extra PROMO for any interested parties that Tasha actively shapes the film stuff at Polygon—a big part of why it’s solid, IMHO. And thank you so much! I appreciate it, because I always feel like even if I tried to objectively take myself out of it, AVC has one of the very best critic rosters out there. And as a freelancer, I don’t really have much knowledge of the inner workings (and am insulated from a lot of that stuff because I mostly interface with people like Dowd, Katie, Danette, and Erik who are all the absolute BEST), but I can definitely say it’s frustrating for me as a reader *and* a writer. (As a writer, more selfishly, because who wouldn’t want to have their byline next to Igantiy, Dowd, Katie, Vikram, D’Angelo, etc. etc.!)
Yeah, I follow Polygon a bit. Some of their TV coverage irritates me though because they’ve spoiled a few things for me over the years through headlines or thumbnails with headlines.
Vaulter?
Vulture.com maybe?
Another vote for Polygon, specifically the entertainment section:https://www.polygon.com/entertainmentNo slideshows. No Kinja.
Unfortunately, no. There’s no one site that has everything the “old” aka “best” version of AVC had; great writers, variety of shows/movies, robust working comment system with an engaging community. Best you can do, as far I can tell, is piecemeal it. From what I’ve seen, Polygon and Vulture are decent, but both have gaps in certain types of shows and movies. And neither have comment sections that I find all that active or easy to use. I get that Disqus wasn’t perfect, but I sorta wish more sites would just use it since it was pretty easy to use. The Avocado, which someone linked to in this thread, has a lot of the old AVC community there and is pretty good for certain things if you want a place to talk about a show (though not every show). I also like some of the stuff on The Ringer but their coverage is even more scattered and there’s no comments at all. While I like some of their people, they usually just stick to the most popular shows and that’s it.
Vulture is so weird in that there will be some periods where I won’t click on anything at all for days at at time and then the next week I’ll be reading every other article posted. I’m never annoyed when the $50 annual membership pops up though, which is about as good as you can get for web subscription journalism.
But I agree with your premise, it’s all super segmented at this point. Polygon has been getting way better over the last year with non-gaming entertainment, which has to be fully down to Tasha getting the editor position as stated above a few times. Vox.com has VanDerWerff but I feel like her pieces get lost in the shuffle over there. Vulture I mentioned above, The Ringer I have to scroll through too much Football related stuff (baseball is the only sport I really care about and they tend to disagree with me) to get to great pieces like “The Black Neo-noirs of the ’90s” and to be honest I barely click into The Verge’s home page any more even though it’s still on my bookmark bar. Sepinwall has slowed his writing down a ton the last few years but still has great insights when he does write about shows.
I know it’d be kind of antithetical to the namesake but I would LOVE IT if RogerEbert.com widened their scope and expanded to more forms of media. Keep film as the main focus but widen the net a bit. I can still get lost for hours on there.
The AV Club’s music coverage more or less always kind of sucked so no real loss or need for a replacement there. At least it’s not as much of an embarrassment as Punknews.org or Pitchfork these days I guess.
Meanwhile, The NY Times is buying The Athletic for HALF A BILLION DOLLARS.Obviously, the AV Club in its current state wouldn’t bring that, and I doubt if even in its glory days it would compete in readership with a popular sports site.But you can’t help but wonder if the idiot Spanfeller and his idiot VC bosses had bothered to maintain the quality of the sites they bought if they couldn’t have flipped them for a hefty profit.I am convinced that people will pay a buck or three a week for consistent good quality content. Tens of millions paid an inflation-adjusted equivalent in the days of popular weekly magazines, and the horrible state of content on today’s internet makes the free competition extremely scarce.But what’s clear is none of these idiots has the foggiest idea how to put together the writers and editors needed for compelling content.
I just hope some moneybags is reaming out Spanfeller today asking why his version of Deadspin wasn’t also bought for $450 million. Asking him why his readership numbers are so bad that they are stuck begging for sponsorship deals with the worst terms possible just to make next month’s target. Not that I think it will make the tiniest difference.
I mean, even Cesspool I mean Barstool makes enough money to put naming rights on a bowl game.
For what it’s worth: I pay my four bucks a month for the NYT (yeah, I get the annual subscription when it goes on sale) and don’t regret it one bit. I would ABSOLUTELY have paid the same – or more – for the AVClub back in the pre-Spanfeller days.
I am convinced that people will pay a buck or three a week for consistent good quality content.Defector seems to be doing OK, I’d love to see that model spread. and I’d happily pay for quality pop-culture content. For circa 2005 AVClub quality content $10-12 / month would be a steal.
Nick Denton was a real piece of shit and as someone who was a fan of Old Gawker Media, I never liked the way people looked back on that era purely with rose colored glasses. There was a lot of garbage in with the good.But WOW, has G/O ever fucked it up so much worse than I could have imagined, and managed to ruin the AV Club to boot.Solidarity with the writers and editors being screwed and sympathy to everyone left behind who will be forced to do more with less.
I mean, did you read the review?
Shit’s weird, man. I have a lot more to say but I shouldn’t.
Do it bruvva what’s the worst that can happen? They’ve already pulled a WWE and fired y’all.
Burning bridges on the way out is rarely good for future employment, particularly publicly burning them.
Burning bridges on the way out is rarely good for future employment
Mm, boots.
What a world, what a world. Sorry this is happening to you and your colleagues. I hope if this goes where it appears to be going from our limited vantage point that everyone is able to land on their feet. Best they can at least.
Ooh, I’ve never wanted to get messy over a jug of margaritas with someone more than I do right now.
I wouldn’t blame you at all if you spit in one of those criminal capitalist pig’s faces when they shitcan you.
Best wishes.
Lets be honest: Ever since this place was no longer under Gawker, it went to shit. The loss of certain writers on this site was devastating to the quality. These days this place is full of third-rate “writers” who act like they didn’t make it past middle school English.
Further to that, BlueKamikazeDefiant? I applied for writing gigs at A Major Online Pop Culture Site But Not This One right before Christmas, and I got back an e-mail saying, “We’d love for you to work for us — we pay $20/article, or as much as $50 for a 3,000-word feature!”Maybe if I was nineteen years old and still in college I’d consider that, but given I’m currently looking at Medicare plans and used to be both a Contributing Editor and a Senior Editor for print magazines (remember those?), I’m appalled that they think those rates will get them anybody who remotely matches the Qualifications they’re demanding.
to be fair Gawker were pretty fucking bad as well
Sounds good. Most of this sites writers are garbage. More focused on how progressive the media they are reviewing is, than if its actually entertaining
That’s so fucking gross.
Do we know if anyone’s starting a new site? More than happy to switch over and even chip in for startup costs.
Be nice if they ungreyed the greylateriat on the new site. I mean, Kinja would come along, right?
ha I mean, they’d probably have to hire a full-time mod team then. But also…would they really keep Kinja.
Goddamn. These vultures, these disgusting parasites…they need to be stopped. This is criminal—at least, it should be.
the 355 official trailer on youtube.com two months ago (355 green orange orange light green yellow orange) 1:07 “I’m a nine year old girl (from Jessica Chastain’s wrists and hands) standing on the seat of a chair I dragged over to the closet (shitty rent controlled apartment old building apartment door opens directly on to living room closet to the left of door built into exterior apartment wall window to right of closet fire escape New York building) in my apartment illumination is from a light bulb above me turned on by short pull cord I can just reach the top shelf in the closet I’m holding a 9mm Heckler & Koch USP pistol (from the molded in thumb grove on the HK MP5) with my left hand under the barrel and my right hand under the grip of the pistol because it is heavy because it is loaded”
History repeats itself. Time for Dissolve part deux?EDIT: Well, I see this suggestion has already been put forth a zillion times by the old people left among us. But still. I want to keep hope alive, this place was glorious once…
On the other hand, a lot has changed since then. I mean, I happily subscribe to publications that are 100% based on subscriptions (a few of them of decent size!) and I support other journalists via Patreon — again, some of them basically make their living of it. Of course, it’s a matter of size — The Dissolve was very ambitious, and I loved it for it, but it was probably a tad too lofty in its ambitions? On the other hand, I’m hardly the first one to have those kind of thoughts, I don’t know shit about how well the AV Club paid its more senior writers (and as somebody approaching a certain age, I do know that the luxury of doing more for less money is not always an option, enthusiasm be damned). All I’m saying is: If the people left who made the site still worth reading, everything else be damned, I’m more than willing to subscribe, support and so on.
Christ Almighty. And he’s one of the good ones
Well, that certainly brings clarity to the “who knows if/when this podcasts posts again” vibes and comments from the last Film ClubWas caught off guard at the time but this puts it in pretty stark perspective.Fuckin’ bummer.
RIP AV Club.
Is G/O short for Get Out?Now that people have shown signs of realizing where they are in the dynamic of work/life and that employers need US more than we need THEM, is this going to do anything more than guarantee G/O media continues to spiral into a farting hole of meh?
wow the movie that looks like total dogshit is total dogshit?
Earlier this week Alison Tolman tweeted (I’m paraphrasing)“It’s funny how these movies put drop dead gorgeous women in roles as spies, as if no one would notice them”.
Oh Alison Tolman, how I deeply deeply wish your career skyrocketed after Fargo.
I know! She did have an ABC series, Emergence, that was cancelled, but I’m sure she’ll get something even better. She’s too talented to not work.
She was also on a weird talking dog dramady. She was the best part. Downward Dog I think was the name? She at least got to have fun playing a murderer in nice outfits recently.
Hollywood is absolutely allergic to plus size women in lead dramatic parts. Tbh, I was pleasantly shocked that she got “Emergence”, even though it only lasted a year. Tbh it had a great cast who did great work, but the material they were given wasn’t great.
Kathy Bates is one of the few to make the cut and its not fair. I like having actresses who look exactly like the common person. I have a friend from middle school and her mom was a dead ringer for Alison. Well she does wonders with whatever role she’s given.
Melissa McCarthy does a good job in Spy.
Of course, same issue with every male spy movie. Name an ugly James Bond/clone movies
But that’s penis. It’s different.
*cough* Jeremy Renner *cough*
He is more of door kicker/cleaner, than actual spy, no?
Are we saying Jeremy Renner is hot? The guy looks like a clay model of William Shatner that fell off the table
Read Linda K takes —> Killa K —> bernardg (Me) again.
It seems you missed on something.
I assuming it’s that Jeremy Renner works well as Clint Barton / Mission Impossible spy because he looks like every other dude at the bar. I think most of the James Bond guys are normal looking but this is probably best the case for why Idris Elba can’t be Bond. Too hot for the role 😂
You… go to different bars than I do.
In that same vein I’ve always found Matt Damon very normie looking post Good Will Hunting.
Oh, leave Shrek alone!
Everyone remembers his scene in the speedo in Casino Royale and he fills out a tux nicely, but Daniel Craig — and I say this with love and admiration — has the face of a bouncer at a Brixton nightclub.
Heh, well you do have a point. The grittier reboot of Bond isn’t a 6’2 suave kind of guy like Brosnan.
Bond was supposed to be charismatic without being that good looking.
Kinda? IIRC Fleming described him as looking somewhat like Hoagy Carmichael, who was definitely a fairly good-looking dude in a 1940s kind of way. But he definitely wasn’t described as being Pierce Brosnan / Tim Dalton stop-you-in-your-tracks handsome.
uh… all of them?
Since when has James Bond EVER been a spy? That’s on the press for not wanting to call him “Action Operative” or something like that.
> Name an ugly James Bond/clone
Woody Allen as Jimmy Bond in Casino Royale.
Um — George Smiley?
Yeah, the last thing you want as a spy is to be noticed. Your average spy is going to look like your average Joe (or Jane).
Obligatory:
It’s one of those Hollywood mysteries, kind of like casting “hit men” who happen to be 6ft4 albino twins or have bizarre habits & conspicuous limps. When they chase the good guy up a down-escalator in some crowded public setting, you just have to like, let go and let god?
That was the premise of Spy with Melissa McCarthy!
the whole point of having drop dead gorgeous women as spies is so they will get noticed by the targets. men will do most anything a sexy woman wants them to.
Yeah, the only time you would want a notably pretty/hot spy is if you were trying to honey-trap someone, like say, Madison Cawthorn or NRA leadership. Otherwise, you’d want someone pretty indistinguishable.
There has to be an essay in how often Jessica Chastain plays your typical girlboss character using gender to obfuscate the violence of the state or capitalism. There’s this movie and then Zero Dark Thirty and then Molly’s Game. In all three you’re supposed to root for her. She has a similar role in A Most Violent Year, but it’s far more ambiguous.
Zero Dark Thirty aged magnificently badly, especially when it was revealed the CIA lady she was based on was the torture queen of the CIA, help fumble the prevention of 9/11 and is married to a CIA chief turned Qanon crazy man.
Damn. I only knew that they relied heavily on the CIA as a source and fudged the timeline to make it look like torture may have been more effective than it was. And even then, it felt like a piece of propaganda.
You can say a lot of things about Zero Dark Thirty, but it did not portray torture as successful. It mostly fails, and the only strong lead they got out of it leads to the death of a lot of their people. In the end, the only good lead they get comes from the guy they DON’T torture for the info.
I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters, but that is not my recollection. IIRC, they got an important tip from a guy they had been torturing when they stopped torturing him. But that implies that torture works. It doesn’t.
Part of the problem is that the whole “torture works/doesn’t work” thing is highly context-specific. If, for example, somebody grabs me off the street and tortures me to extract my debit card pin number, it’s not going to take much. My feeble checking account isn’t worth losing a finger or enduring a great deal of pain, they can have my two hundred and forty bucks. As would be the same for most people. So, technically, in that situation, torture would work. If, however, somebody grabs me off the street and starts torturing me to get the location and school schedule of my niece and nephew, they’re going to have to work on me for a while. And when I do talk, I’m going to lie. And keep lying. And every lie I tell they’re going to have to independently verify. And at this point, there’s nothing else for them to try, because by virtue of them going the torture route I already know that they’re bad people up to bad things. You can’t say, “I’m going to remove your fingernails, but I’m totally not going to do anything terrible when you give me the location of your loved ones.” It just doesn’t work. And maybe eventually I crack and tell them the truth, but by then I’ve wasted an enormous amount of their time and resources on false leads and it’s been weeks/months/years in the process, by which time hopefully any information I do have is completely out of date and useless.
So it’s less a question of whether torture does/doesn’t work than torture is useless as an intelligence gathering tool. Anything important enough to torture over is important enough to lie about, and because of the torture you’ve ensured that the target will never be willingly cooperative. By doing something terrible and morally inexcusable you’ve closed the door on every other option and all you get in exchange is a bunch of garbage information and wasted time until maybe, eventually, you get something that may have been useful at one point and might be useful now, but probably not.
By “guy they don’t torture” you mean “guy they stop torturing for a little while to do a good cop/bad cop thing?”
Yeah, it’s been ages since I’ve seen ZD30 as well, but I remember they get the information they need when they trick a detainee into thinking he gave them information…*because* he’d been sleep deprived *because* of their torture. So it’s still torture working in a de facto way, and certainly not the rosy recollection Jessica Chastain has where it’s given out over hummus and tea as she did in this poorly dated DP/30 interview (Skip to the 18:22 mark):
Her name is Alfreda Francis Bekowitz. Post 2015 all depictions of this woman like The Looming Towers and the Report depict her as a truly loathsome individual. I’m in favor of negative depictions compared to the girl boss hero who got Bin Laden.
it was deeply dopey upon release. What a bizarre reception it got from critics.
ZD30 was badly aged the day it came out. For all its hollow posturing about the moral complexities of the global war on terror, it is basically the cheering section for the idea that killing the bad guy is somehow justice for the thing he did, and totally justifies the unconstitutional military/security/surveillance-industrial complex that profits from treating everyone like a prima facie criminal.
The movie started out with a downer ending where nothing is resolved, but then during production we actually did kill Bin Laden, so they kind of had to acknowledge that. And they definitely could have done it more gracefully.
It’s aged badly if viewed as a positive depiction of US foreign policy. Viewed as a nihilistic story about pointless state-sponsored violence, it’s aged just fine.
My favourite part of Molly’s Game is when her dad shows up to tell her that every choice she makes in life is because of her daddy issues. A Most Violent Year at least gave us the part where she says “This was very disrespectful” and flicks the cigarette…
Hmm, I’d argue the essay is more about Jessica Chastain playing “strong female” roles written by men who think the way to write those roles is just to make a woman do and say everything a man would do and say.
I’m not going to lie. She’s damn good in those tough as nail roles. It’s just interesting that this is the role that has been built around her time and again.
*Lara Strong, the film’s protagonist, rappels down a skyscraper wall in a harness that wraps around her pelvis*“Man, this thing is doing a number on my balls!”
Congrats, you’ve just made the Black List.
It’s called typecasting and it’s not exclusive to women. But it’s harder for women to breakthrough because they still don’t have the kind of sway men do to take risks with their career.
It’s sad that Jessica Chastain hasn’t been in a good movie since Miss Sloane all the way back in 2016.
This is sadly the same road that Amy Adams is on.
Amy Adams at least has Sharp Objects and Vice on her recent resume, but yea definitely some bombs in there too after Arrival in 2016.
The problem with action movies led by women is that it’s often obvious that the actresses in it wanted to do an action film but had no good offer on the table, so they picked the least worst of the bunch and hoped for the best. That, or the lack of choices makes it hard for them to judge the quality of a project. I imagine a Simon Kinberg movie could be a good stepping stone if you are a new actress trying to make it in Hollywood but it’s definitely not good if you already won an Oscar.
I like how the issue is framed as “these women pick terrible movies to be in!” and not “these men keep making terrible movies for women to be in!”
…I read Arrowe77’s “but had no good offer on the table, so they picked the least worst of the bunch” as clearly implying “no one in overwhelmingly-male Hollywood is making any decent action movies for them.” Framing absolutely matters, but I don’t think this particular comment is a clear case for that.
I definitely said that this was a question of having no better offer on the table.
It’s a little from column A and a little from column B.
The reason there’s a lack of options is because women still aren’t seen as viable action stars outside of a select few. Unlike men, where someone like Chris Pratt can go from Andy on Parks and Rec to Star Lord and Tomorrow War only having to get in shape.But look at any of the women on that show…could you picture Aubrey Plaza or Rashida Jones being handed any thing like what Pratt was?So women have to take the jobs that are there simply to get themselves *any* kind of action role to prove they can do it. Otherwise you run in to a situation where studios (and casual audiences) just keep giving everything to Charlize Theron or Angelina Jolie.Wasn’t it Emily Blunt who did an interview about how she’s tired of being the ONLY woman fans/press throw around when suggesting who should play an action heroine? Because she wanted to see other woman getting elevated alongside her.
Or it’s like Salt, where a script about a male action hero just randomly gets cast with a woman instead.
I don’t think that’s a valid excuse though.Instead, I think the “problem” is more about the audience than the movie itself.Here’s what I mean. You can churn out your standard action movie where dude murders a bunch of other dudes and it’ll be generic as fuck. But yet, the audience is there for it. We’ll watch that shit all day, every day and keep coming back. We’ll watch your 6 Undergrounds, your Triple Frontiers, your Olympus Has Fallen all goddamn day. That audience is committed as fuck.But despite how much they claim to want a “female-led action movie” when push comes to shove, the audience doesn’t put their money where their mouth is. I’m not saying that action movies with female leads don’t have a place or an audience. But generally that audience is just the regular action movie audience who is just as satisfied with seeing a burly dude murder dudes as with a hot chick on leather and heels murdering dudes. And I think the simple answer is because that’s obviously not what people clamoring for more female representation want. Yeah, they want representation and strong female characters, etc. But they don’t actually want a Action Movie with all the tropes and themes that comes with that. They know they’re dissatisfied with what they’re getting, but it’s hard to specify what you DO want, rather than what you DON’T.I don’t know what they want. I’m not in that potential audience. I like the current crop of Action Movies. I like burly dudes kicking ass. And hot chicks kicking ass. And all general manner of extreme and often unnecessary asskicking. So I can’t really articulate whatever it is that people who say they want female action movies are asking for. But at some point, the action movie industry is gonna need to either figure that out, or give up and just keep making movies for the audience it actually has, rather than an audience that isn’t all that interested in what it has to offer.
You make many good points. It’s true that the audience for female-led action films might be much smaller than the “representation” crowd claims, and I don’t think it’s wise that so many of these films focus their marketing almost exclusively on female audiences (ex. Charlie’s Angels). It’s one thing to say they can front a film without men, it’s another to say they can make the film financially successful without men paying to see it.
That being said, when an Academy Award-nominated actress wants to make an action film, she should have better options than a film directed by Simon Kinberg.
Now I’m extremely curious about the politics of how Atomic Blonde came to be. Because that is one hell of a movie, but was it lightning in a bottle, or just competent filmmaking?
Aw, I really wanted this one to be good. I know Simon Kinberg hasn’t earned a lot of goodwill, but I still liked seeing how much Jessica Chastain spearheaded the project, and that it has a diverse cast (with some pretty heavyweight talents). Plus, every time we get another Ocean’s 8 or Ghostbusters 2016 people complain that we need to give women their own franchises instead of co-opting others. And look – someone tried to give women their own action franchise.Ah well. I might still see it anyway. Plus, I have a massive crush on Sebastian Stan, so there’s still added incentive.
What the world needs now, is another folk singer.Like I need a hole in my head.
I don’t know what the world may need, but a V8 engine’s a good start for me.
the schtick is feeling more than a little tired in The 355. Katie, fine if the movie is mediocre, but don’t give me this crap that a kick-ass women’s movie is “more than a little tired.” Are you effing kidding me? Chastain, as leader, recruited these woman and they raised all the money to make it themselves BECAUSE Hollywood is not taking advantage of kick-ass women. Jesus — YOU’RE A WOMAN, KATIE!!!
I try not to make this sort of daft comparison, but…this review would be downright problematic if a man had written it.
Why? Its just pointing out the flaws and tired tropes
well if the movie sucks what does it matter
Ready my comment again. I already said that that’s one thing. My contention was she called the female action flick “tired.” How is it so?! It’s a RIDICULOUS contention. These women had to fight just to get this made.
I think the ‘tired’ part is more of a reference to the type of female action flick this is. I don’t know if I agree with that statement though, I’m just spitballing here.
That’s exactly how I read it bc it’s true
What’s tired is the specific approach of “We take all these actors people like and make them kickass gunfighters, whip up a bit of a plot, it’s bound to be awesome!”
It’s the action movie equivalent of what in Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary is called the “Godot Movie”. That’s when a studio takes a bunch of funny actors and puts them in a comic situation and the audience sits around waiting for laughs that never come.Basically it’s harder to make a good action movie than it looks and just putting talented actors in it guarantees nothing.
White feminism is often the worst. You wind up with a bunch of “Cool Girl” types who sneer at any attempt at progress while really not doing much to help the cause along.
The way I saw it, it’s not that it’s an action blockbuster about women, but that those women are written in shallow roles with no unique or 3-dimensional character of their own for a movie that pretends to be feminist while also being propaganda for the CIA. You could say most of that about plenty of Hollywood films, but I guess the fact that it’s ostensibly trying to be feminist makes the lack of depth more egregious. And most of the complaints about the movie are just that it’s mediocre, not just the girlboss angle.
She could have done a lot better than getting Simon Kinberg to write it and direct it, and that’s where the ‘tired’ is coming from.I say this being fully aware how easy it is to be an armchair quarterback, but his involvement sounds like the fundamental mistake of this production. It’s not like he’s some big name, he’s best known for writing and directing movies that aren’t critical or commercial successes. No one shows up to a movie because it’s a Simon Kinberg Joint (I mean, maybe his family does to support him, IDK). This sounds like it would have been a far better movie with the same name recognition for marketing if they’d gotten some of the people who make good action TV – people involved in Strike Back or Banshee, or Game of Thrones or Generation Kill.
humorous review. trailer for this flick was absolute shite.
From the man who gave us TWO bad Dark Phoenix adaptations…
Not going to see this ever but I did enjoy Jessica Chastain in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
I remember seeing the preview for this before some movie I watched in the past few months and at the end, once the overly loud explosions and music have faded, you generally hear a few comments or snark, but in this case there was total silence, which is kinda how I felt about it, other than “wow Chastain and Lupita must have needed paychecks.”
Isn’t this a good thing? I’m glad that we can make a generic action film staring a bunch of women and it’s just about as par for the course as your generic action film staring a bunch of men.
That is a very large head.
I legitimately have no idea why an English person would join a group which Is Anti-English by it’s very name? Also why would a German, a Colombian or a Chinese Woman care about The American War Of Independence? Like it’s such a weird Americocentric name to choose for your global spy team. It’d be like me forming a Super Group and calling it The Yam Yams.Finally without understanding where the name came from then the name of the film is really hard to remember call it something simple like “Girlbosses Go PEWPEWPEW” or shit, man.
Having a character talk unironically about the “moral clarity” of the War on Terror is a good way to get me to not root for them.
That’s such a weird hand-me-down trope. Back when spy movies were about the War on Terror, characters would keep pining for the “moral clarity” of the Cold War. Then in the Cold War, they were saying it about World War II. Sadly talkies hadn’t been invented during World War I, or we could have heard spies lamenting the moral clarity they felt during the Moro Rebellion.
The trailer for this was so offputting. Like first it was all OK cool spy movie, and then…it had to show that they are WOMEN with FEELINGS. Find me one action thriller where they zoom in on Tom Cruise crying a single tear.PS. Fuck G/O
This movie lost me the moment Jessica Chastain took off a wig that was the same color and length of her normal hair. The rest of the wig game is so hilariously terrible that I couldn’t take anything seriously after that. Add in so many continuity errors (Nyong’o drops her shoes through a ceiling tile, drops down herself, puts her burner phone on the ground, then stomps it with her high heels without ever putting the shoes back on) that the only way to enjoy this film is finding the “so bad it’s good” moments a la “The Happening” or “The Room.”Actual brief conversation I had with a young woman leaving the theatre:
Her: Did you like the movie?
Me: The kindest word I can say is “no.”
Her: Hmm, must have been because it was women kicking ass for once.
Me: Yes, that must have been it.If only I could have hidden my obvious sexism better! Dammit, she saw right through me. I mean, we all know any dislike from someone with a penis is invalid! How could I be so easily fooled?
Funny I gleaned all of that just from seeing the trailer.
so the opening scene to this is the same as the openign scene in Atomic Blonde?
Still gonna watch it with glee, because individually all of that talent rocks, and just seeing them playing off each other on screen will be a treat, even if the script and plot is lazy.
Diane Krueger is just so friggin’ hot!
thanks for the bad review , it sounds like it’s worth a watch!
What gets me about all these films is how bad the action is. I mean look at the villainess and other stuff from Asia and you can see that female action can be pretty hardcore and no need for the embarrassing wirefu acrobatics that should have died in the 90s.John Wick laid a template for action that has led to its revival. Atomic Blond showed that the formula can be translated to a female protag ( that movie just needed to be more fun). Hollywood however ignores all of that and continues with bland female action films with choreography that wouldn’t cut it on TV even.
At one point, Mace waxes nostalgic about the moral clarity of the Global War on Terrorism.Let me guess, this line was delivered without a hint of irony.
Did they “truly” want to “change the game” with this picture? Nah.
Just how bad is it? Is it Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife bad? Or Dark Phoenix bad? Or does it have a few redeeming qualities and should be better like Gunpowder Milkshake?
At least that McCarthy annoyance aint in it, so its at least a bit of eye candy in there fwiw