by Nick Ferro, Contributing Writer
Do you like Adam Driver? Do you like dinosaurs? Would you be interested in a movie where Adam Driver fights dinosaurs? These are the questions that the movie 65 asks, and for me, when the screenwriters of A Quiet Place ask these kinds of questions, my natural inclination is to answer with a resounding yes! 65 tentatively delivers on the promise of its premise: You will see both Driver, dinosaurs, and the two fighting. However, beyond the intriguing premise, as an avid moviegoer I had some followup questions of my own. Is there a story? Character drama? Incredible amounts of Moonfall-style cheese? Or perhaps a healthy amount of Commando-style ‘80s action? What is this movie? Well, those questions might have more disappointing answers depending on your taste.
65 opens up on an alien planet with a slew of reading, explaining that we are on an alien planet. It’s a concerning opening which says to me, this movie thinks its audience is dumb. After we are introduced to Driver’s character, Mills, we learn that he is about to take a two-year mission ferrying people in cryo-stasis across the galaxy in order to afford expensive medical care to treat an unknown disease that his daughter has. Very quickly after this scene, we jump to a year and a half into the mission, where his ship is ravaged by asteroids and forced to crash land on a mysterious uncharted planet. The movie once again assumes that the audience has never seen a movie, or has no higher than a fifth-grade education, as it proceeds to tell us the title: 65… million years ago… visitors came… to EARTH! I suppose that some people might have just assumed it was another alien planet. However, the location of the planet doesn’t really matter. In fact, I can’t be 100% sure most of the dinosaurs presented were even real or looked historically accurate. But we move on with the story quickly enough, which is maybe this movie’s one saving grace. It is short. Mills has to assess his surroundings and recover any survivors; unfortunately, all the passengers have died, save for one little girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) who is around the same age as Mills’ daughter. Together they must journey from their crash site to the intact escape pod on a nearby mountain before the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs crashes to Earth.
All in all, this setup sounds like it would make for an exciting adventure film. The “lone wolf and cub” genre has seen some interesting entries recently, and just because Pedro Pascal is not in this movie doesn’t mean I wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of “Daddy Adam Driver.” However, 65 doesn’t take this route. Instead, it opts for what is the biggest flaw of the movie: Koa doesn’t speak the same language as Mills. A language barrier might be an idea worth pursuing if this was a survival movie in which the two spend an extended period of time together and learn to get past the language barrier. But they spend a couple days trekking through the environment simply saying, repeating, and then shouting words back and forth at each other. Save for a few words of understanding to move things along, the entire dialogue of the script presents as unnecessary. Driver and Greenblatt give great performances, and do their best to elevate the material, but the script just isn’t helping them, as there isn’t much to elevate.
But let’s be real: When you see Adam Driver shooting a space gun at a dinosaur in a movie trailer, you aren’t looking for incredible depth and character-driven emotion. You want cool “dino pew-pews!” I am happy to say, there are some cool “dino pew-pews,” sometimes… when they aren’t cutting away, or filming during a night scene, or in a third act climactic battle when the ammo runs out. Okay, so the action isn’t very good; there are some moments, just not many. Fortunately for some, 65 actually plays more like a creature feature horror thriller that occasionally does some effective tension-building. There are a number of occasions in the first act when the dinosaurs are just lurking behind a bush, tree, or rock, or are in a cave, but for some reason never show themselves. Then as Mills and Koa begin their journey to the escape pod, the dinos start to show themselves. It starts out pretty cool when they help a baby dinosaur out of a tar pit, and it goes horribly wrong when that baby is immediately and viciously devoured by a pack of velociraptors. Our heroes must hide behind a tree to avoid detection, and that’s the last we see of them. Then they are attacked by weird crocodile-man “dinosaurs,” which is a pretty decent scene, but it is unfortunately edited to death. Credit where it’s due though: This scene showcases some pretty impressive CGI that I wouldn’t have expected from a movie of this budget range. They eventually make their way to a cave where we embark on The Descent horror portion of the film, full of cave-ins, gross bugs and beating a dinosaur stalking them in the dark.
When the movie tires to be a gross, scary, horror movie, full of thrills, it mostly succeeds. I think that fans of movies of this caliber of film will really enjoy 65. However, the trailers and the premise are very misleading — there is not a ton of action, it is never over the top, and the movie tries too hard to be dramatic with its characters’ tragic backstories. Expectations may have played a role in my dislike of 65, as I was really looking forward to a fun time at the movies. However, this is a genre that really isn’t my speed, resulting in me leaving the theater disappointed.
I am left to wonder why Hollywood has such trouble with dinosaur movies. I can count on one hand all the good ones, and half are either animated or have Steven Spielberg’s name attached (or both; where are my, We’re Back! fans at?). I would recommend 65 if you are an Adam Driver stan, or a big fan of creature thrillers. Unfortunately, if you are looking for a fun action-adventure movie with dinosaurs, I have to recommend you pass on 65.
Score: 5/10
65 is currently playing in theaters
You can read more from Nick Ferro, and follow him on Twitter and Letterboxd