65

Alvarez Now

65
USA 2023
Directed by
Scott Beck & Bryan Woods
Columbia
UK cinema release print

Okay, so this review of the latest Adam Driver sci-fi movie 65 is going to be pretty short. So being because it’s neither terrible or great and I don’t have much to say about it either way. It was fairly entertaining but the negatives and positives of the thing balance out pretty well with nothing really standing out in either direction.

Okay, so the plot is that, while transporting human cargo in suspended animation capsules which should take him about two years, the starship piloted by Mills, played by Driver, is hit by part of an uncharted asteroid cluster and crash lands on an unknown planet. Only he survives the crash, other than one suspended animation pod which wasn’t destroyed. He manages to locate it and thaws out a 9 year old girl, Koa, played by Ariana Greenblatt, who doesn’t speak the same language as him. He then has to get her and himself a number of kilometres away and up a mountain to find where the escape capsule ended up, to see if he can get them off the planet. Where he has landed is the planet earth, 65 million years ago... where dinosaurs just want to eat them, more than anything else. And, of course, those of you familiar with the Alvarez hypothesis will know exactly why Driver’s craft was hit by an asteroid (with bigger ones to follow) and just why he has to get them off planet as quickly as possible.

And like I said, there’s good and there’s bad. The good... well, the three main actors, Driver, Greenblatt and Chloe Coleman as Driver’s ‘sick daughter back home’ (who was so good in Gunpowder Milkshake... reviewed here) are all absolutely brilliant. And, to support them, the special effects are pretty nicely done too. Add in a fine score by Chris Bacon and things are an easy watch.

The bad... well, there are a couple of things. Firstly, I wanted to see this movie because, when I saw the trailer a number of weeks ago, it reminded me of just the kind of story that would have been serialised as a black and white comic strip in a late 1970s to mid 1980s issue of 2000AD, when I was a kid. And, well, that’s pretty much exactly what we've got here. Which is a double edged sword because the script, as in the way the characters bond and the situations they find themselves on their quest, really does seem like it would have been fine in the 1980s but... it just seems a little hackneyed and clichéd these days. There really aren’t many surprises... apart from a truly brilliant, early jump scare when Driver’s character first sees some dinosaurs... and the tired old trope of separating and then running away from danger into even worse danger seems well overplayed here. I think they do that one at least three or four times and, you kinda knew exactly when these moments were going to happen. As well as knowing pretty much how each character was going to get out of their situation, due to telegraphing things earlier in the movie. So, yeah, it was kinda comfortable and entertaining rather than scary, for most of the time.

And the dinosaurs are pretty well done but they’ve certainly gone away from the expected designs of things and these have their own look. Not a bad thing, for sure but, well, when I see a big dinosaur I want it to be at least as scary as those in the original Jurassic Park movies... these one’s weren’t all that, it has to be said. Competent and believable for sure but, no... much less intimidating than I would have liked.

But, like I said, scripting aside, 65 is more than competently handled, very well acted and a general crowd pleaser in terms of at least delivering some action and lots of appropriate growling. It’s just not a great film and, as I said at the start, not a terribly bad one either. I’d recommend it if there’s nothing better on and you want to just lay back in your seat and be entertained, Nothing to write home about but, you’re certainly in the hands of some good actors in this one.