THE 355

CONTAINS SOME MINOR SPOILERS

There's actually nothing drastically wrong with The 355, the first major studio action release of 2022 which is pretty much as silly and implausible as we really need movies to be right now. In the current miserable climate we could use as much flashy and ridiculous nonsense as Universal, Warners at al can throw at us and Simon Kinberg's arbitrarily titled film (355 is briefly mentioned in dialogue in the last four minutes) certainly delivers on that score. It's a pity perhaps that the McGuffin at the centre of it is yet another electronic gizmo that allows the owner to break into every computer system on the planet - haven't we had this device in at least one Fast And Furious and Mission Impossible film yet?

The gimmick here is that it's an all-female crew with an international flavour. Top agents Jessica Chastain (USA), Diane Kruger (Germany) and Bingbing Fan (China), ex-MI5 techie Lupita Nyong'o (UK) and psychotherapist Penelope Cruz (Colombia) have to team up and gallivant around the world after the superchip and Chastain's of-course-he-wasn't-killed-in-the-opening-reel love interest gone rogue Sebastian Stan; Jason Flemyng pops up occasionally as the villain.

It is tosh and twaddle and incredibly undemanding, but it's perfectly well done and agreeably crunchy knockabout fun with a good rapport between the five heroes. It's certainly better than the first two Charlie's Angels movies (I actually liked its most recent incarnation) and maybe, if the audience is there, it might make it to a sequel (The 356?) or two. Not a classic but fun while it's on; if you don't think about it too much and if you don't take it too seriously you should have a decent enough time with it.

***