Review: 65

65
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Scott Beck & Bryan Woods / Trailer

In a month seemingly dominated by sequels and franchise entries, it makes a refreshing change to see a film that's standing on its own feet. Of course, when that film is a transparent mashup of After Earth and Jurassic Park by way of Passengers, it's debatable how much originality is actually allowed to seep onto cinema screens these days, but points for trying.

COACH

We meet Adam Driver as Mills, essentially a prehistoric alien coach driver who's tasked with transporting cryogenically frozen passengers on a two-year interplanetary journey while struggling to deal with separation from his terminally ill daughter (Chloe Coleman). When his transport runs viewport-first into an uncharted asteroid belt, the ship is forced to crash land on a primitive jungle planet, killing everyone except Mills and a young (and now orphaned) girl, Koa (Arianna Greenblatt).

Separated from a rescue-shuttle by 12km of uneven ground and the array of dinosaurs who live and hunt there, the pair have only a day to make it to their escape vessel because a larger asteroid is about to collide with the planet. Because that planet is Earth, 65 million years ago. And yes, it's that asteroid*¹.

SLEDGEHAMMER

At 93 minutes this film is lean, and the screenplay dosn't mess about in setting up its stall. The pacing is brisk by necessity but never feels rushed (if anything, viewers are more likely to want the two central characters to stop dawdling with bugs and berries). Chris Bacon's score (with contributions from Danny Elfman) is bombastic and suspensful in turn, and Salvatore Totino's cinematography is very solid considering how much of 65 takes place at night or in dark spaces. The production design is accomplished throughout, even if the ship-interiors immediately look like they're from about a hundred other mid-budget sci-fi films.

What's perhaps more surprising is how emotionally competent the film is. Greenblatt balances fear, panic and trauma while retaining her character's humanity*² (and, essentially, her likeability) in a performance which is far better than the film technically needs. Likewise, Driver initially feels miscast despite his sincerity. We've seen glimpses of Adam's action-chops before, and he holds up his character well as a pragmatic do-er who has no idea how to deal with his situation or how he feels about Koa effectively becoming a surrogate daughter. But the bottom line is that any other version of this film would have starred a gurning Mark Wahlberg or Gerard Butler, so I suspect we got the good end of a deal here.

For the most part what writer/directors Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are doing isn't great, and yet the film is pretty great at doing it. Considering how inherently silly and pedestrian it all is, this works surprisingly well. The script takes its characters and threats seriously enough for them to matter, but never tries to convince the audience that this is anything more than perfectly serviceable, perfectly disposable fun.

65 won't be world-changing (unless you're one of those dinosaurs), but it's far better than it probably has any real right to be.

*¹ It's okay, I know. You don't have to tell me it's classed as a meteor once it enters the planet's atmosphere. I know that and you know that. It just doesn't feel right to blithely flip between asteroid and meteor in the same paragraph while expecting everyone else to be familiar the similarities and distinctions between them. Grammar vs science I suppose, and paper beats rock this time round. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I mean 'humanity' in an emotional sense. SPOILERS, highlight-to-read: The characters aren't human; this isn't a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy tribute where the pair get accidentally stranded on prehistoric Earth and end up inadvertently kickstarting humanity. Apart from anything else that would be deeply weird since Koa is supposed to be around nine years old. But Mills and Koa are played by humans here (without colour-tinting or sticking gills etc on their faces) because that's the best way of selling the performances. Just buy into the fact that they're human-looking aliens with no humans around for direct comparison and you won't go far wrong. [/END] ^{[ BACK ]}

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