65

Adam Driver is a somewhat strange actor. He’s been in movies for over a decade. It was 2015 when he gained widespread recognition for his role as Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens, although he was already known to TV audiences as “the boyfriend from Girls”, and movie fanatics for a variety of supporting roles. Prior to acting, he was a Marine, which is pretty easy to envision given his large and imposing frame and rugged face. Charisma has been his tactic to compensate for his intimidating presence, turning him into one the most well-loved actors in the States.

To me, much of that background sounds like a great fit for an action star. Action movie heroes often are related to the military in some way, and we need them to be incredibly charming to allow us to forgive the horrific acts of violence they’re asked to commit. And yet, apart from the aforementioned Star Wars trilogy, he hasn’t been in many action films. Logan Lucky and The Last Duel are the only ones which qualify. Which I find quite surprising.

So when I heard that he was starring in a movie where he fights dinosaurs? You could hear the sound of my excited fist pump a few states over. Add in that it involved future tech and a crash landing space ship and trying to get home, and I was quite excited for this dumb fun.

…why do I let myself get excited for blockbusters?

65 finds its star playing Mills, of the planet Somaris, on an extended mission transporting people in cryosleep, when his ship collides with an unexpected meteor, causing him to crash-land on what is quickly revealed to be prehistoric Earth, during the reign of the dinosaurs. All but one of his passengers is killed, a young child whose parents are among the dead. Together, they’ve got to travel across various territory full of dangerous beasts to reach their escape pod and, well, escape.

It's never a great sign when a movie starts out by telling us its main characters are from an alien planet 65 million years ago, and yet the scene and their conversation are indistinguishable from one on Earth. The clothing, the beach, the language, the style of speech, the concerns, the motivations. It immediately raised all sorts of questions.

From the trailer, my thought was that maybe it was gonna be that temporal anomaly sent him back in time (i.e. time travel). This can be a trickier needle to thread, since you also need to give them a way to get home. But hey, it’s clearly aiming for “schlocky B movie”, so you don’t need to make it particularly convincing. If you’re gonna do the alien planet thing, gimme something that makes it feel alien. Advanced tech doesn’t do it, since that just screams future to me. And that’s all they tried. I get that budget plays a role. But it immediately took me out of the world.

You might be wondering why would such an advanced civilization not have some sort of translator tech, which could give us some sense of how we’re understanding him. And they do! At least, his ship does. Not that it’s ever used. It’s just conveniently broken in the crash. It also means that when he does find a passenger alive, and it turns out she’s from "the northern territories”, they have limited means of communication.

From then on, the movie proceeds exactly as you’d expect. You can guess every major plot point, every dramatic beat, and the ending. The action scenes are pretty okay, although the fact that they’re fighting dinosaurs is cool as hell. There’s the addition of a timer for them to get off Earth somewhere around the hour mark which is kind of clever. But then we get a handful of false endings, which just end up feeling drawn out and overdramatic, despite some payoffs.

Ultimately, it’s a movie without a thought in its head, without interesting visuals, and without strong characters. Driver is great as always. But Greenblatt’s Koa feels very flat, in large part since she’s rendered largely mute. While the writing isn’t doing her any favors, she doesn’t imbue the character with any sort of lived in quality. Which is a hard thing to do! And she’s quite young. But that character needed something to elevate her, and it wasn’t there.

This is a sadly forgettable film.