65 (2023)
Dir: Scott Beck; Bryan Woods
Writers: Scott Beck; Bryan Woods
Starring: Adam Driver; Ariana Greenblatt
By Paul Bernardo paulieb2003@gmail.com
Scott and Bryan are a team. They are a writing team. Their breakthrough achievement was The Quiet Place. I know everyone has heard of that movie. Sam Raimi pops up in this as a producer, so he must be great fans of their work and I’m sure he was 90% why the movie was made and why the movie attracted Adam Driver. Since this script and this movie is nothing special at all, it had me scratching my head why such top talent was in this.
65 stands for 65 million years ago, on Earth. They are up front about it, so it’s not a big reveal like in Planet of the Apes. They tell you this right away, basically in the opening credits. So Adam Driver, I don’t think is human, or he is human but just from another galaxy and another planet way before humans formed on Earth. So he crash lands on Earth, 65 million years ago. Not that he went back in time. He didn’t. His people were alive on a planet somewhere, 65 million years ago, and were completing interspace travel quite frequently. Adam got caught in an asteroid belt and damaged his plane and had to land here, on Earth, during the Jurassic period with all the dinosaurs and everything.
65 is the exact same story as After Earth, the flop starring Will Smith and his real son, Jaden Smith. Ship crashes on an uncharted planet, they have to reach another part of the ship that’s far away, and dangerous creatures who wish to eat them are in the way.
In After Earth, Jaden has to grow up and learn to not be a brat, and not be scared. In 65, there is no growth whatsoever with anybody. So, it’s actually less engaging as far as stories go.
Since the story is so flat and monotone, you would think it would be all chase sequences, but it’s not. Just mostly walking through tall trees and crawling through caves. They are very frugal with the CGI creatures. There are some that pop up here and there, but so little that when the climax comes, you think the movie just started.
In terms of writing, this is as unmemorable and unexciting as it gets. Adam Driver holds your attention, because he is that good. Otherwise this would be a horrible TV show, much less a mediocre movie. No twists, no intensity, no weird left turns, no excitement. Just Adam Driver trying to follow a map with a girl played by Ariana Greenblatt who doesn’t speak or understand English.
It seems to me, the best part of this movie was about Adam’s family back home. He had a sick daughter that needed a cure, and that is why he took this dangerous mission in the first place. He needed to afford to get his daughter the treatment she needed to be cured. That to me, seems like the main story of the movie, but Scott and Bryan use that as a backstory, and all we get is Adam walking through a jungle with a ray gun and an alien girl.
Just an empty effort all around by everybody except Adam and Ariana. These two actors brought their best and made a little something out of absolutely nothing at all. Kudos to them, it only makes me respect them more, and respect Scott and Bryan less.
This movie is a horrible storm, I would not go near it. Go take shelter from this man made disaster. Thanks for reading and see you next week!
