65 (2023)

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods have worked together for a number of years now. They share the directing and writing duties on this sci-fi action movie that pits Adam Driver against a bunch of dinosaurs, and they have to share the blame for such an underwhelming end result. Because 65 isn't very good, and it had the potential to be a lot of fun.

Driver plays Mills, a man who ends up on a space expedition in the hope of earning enough money to cure his daughter (Chloe Coleman) of an illness that has been slowly getting worse for a while now. One asteroid-related incident later, Mills is on a strange planet with a young girl, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), he cannot understand. The strange planet is actually Earth, but it's the Earth of 65 million years ago. When dinosaurs were at the top of the food chain. Mills and Koa need to make their way to another crashed part of the spaceship if they stand any chance of getting back off the planet. They have limited tools and weaponry to help them, that communication barrier creating another obstacle, and the fact that we can assume they haven't seen even just one of the Jurassic Park movies means they are woefully unprepared for the danger of their environment.

I like Adam Driver. A lot. He's not the best person for the lead role here, but he's not terrible either. Greenblatt holds her own alongside him, and their relationship at the heart of the story is the best thing about the movie. In fact, it's probably the only thing worthwhile about the movie, and the fact that the film-makers at least managed to cast two not-inconsiderable talents in the lead roles is a stroke of luck for them, because nothing else works.

Okay, there's one more plus. This clocks in at around the 90-minute mark. That's a rare treat nowadays. It's just a shame that the runtime feels like a bit more than that, mainly due to the sluggish nature of the film in between the infrequent, and far too brief, set-pieces.

It's as if Beck and Woods had the core idea first ("what if we make a sci-fi movie about a guy fending off aliens . . . but the aliens are dinosaurs . . . and the guy is actually on Earth?") and then didn't know how to really make the most of it. Even the structure of the thing, with viewers being given the set-up during the opening titles, is a misfire. This should have been a fun film that kept viewers entertained, threw around plenty of wild creature design, and then capped everything off at the very end with a sign to indicate "oh, by the way, the adventure you just enjoyed was all taking place on . . . Earth, boooooooom". While not without a handful of decent moments, they are too few and far between. And I defy most people to actually care about the fate of the main characters as things move into the third act.

The visual style is horrible and dull, the special effects suffer in comparison to many superior dinosaur movies we've seen over the past few decades (including the first Jurassic Park movie, which holds up brilliantly to this day), and even the music is immediately forgettable and unable to feel like a good enough fit for the whole experience.

This didn't make me angry enough to want it wiped out by an Extinction Level Event, but I definitely won't be rushing to rewatch it. And I would recommend that most people just give it a miss. It's really not worth your time, and it's certainly not worth the talents of Driver and Greenblatt.

4/10

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