THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
When you get through a bunch of good stuff, you're bound to encounter something very bad. So I'm a little stunned when I say an example of something bad is 65.
PLOT
The 2023 film follows Mills, a pilot from the fictional planet Somaris. He takes on a two year expedition, hoping to earn money needed to treat his ill daughter Nevine. The journey goes awry when he is struck by asteroids and crash lands on earth, 65 million years apart from the modern human society. As his ship is confirmed to be beyond repair, the only other passenger that survived is a young girl named Koa. He vows to protect her and take her to the top of a mountain where a functional escape shuttle is present. Mills and Koa have trouble communicating due to speaking different languages without a translator. He is however able to lie to her and tell her her family is atop the mountain, in order to convince her to follow him. The journey is quickly proven to be dangerous due to encountering various dinosaurs on the way towards the mountains. For the majority of the day, they encounter multiple dinosaurs. By the time they reach a cave they reach a cave at night, Koa would watch Nevine's video messages, confirming she passed away before the crash. The moment of rest would be interrupted when a giant theropod attacks the cave. Mills is able to wound it before he and Koa go further into the cave. When a rockfall separates them, Koa is able to get out of the cave first before defending herself against a velociraptor. As Mills would find another way out for himself, he would kill an Oviraptor attacking him. As he continues searching for Koa, he would fall into quicksand but be quickly saved by her. Once they continue heading towards the escape shuttle, Mills notices the same asteroid that knocked him off course is about to strike Earth within 12 hours. By the time they finally reach the mountain, Koa would be disappointed realizing he lied about her family. This would give him the chance to confess how he regrets not being there for his daughter before she died, inspiring him to promise protecting his sole passenger. Once they board the escape shuttle, the debris of the asteroid causes them to fall down the mountain. Mills pulls off slaying a Tyrannosaurus Rex duo while getting the aid of Koa to kill the same theropod from the cave. The film would end with the two leaving the planet before the asteroid officially strikes.THOUGHTS
I honestly didn't pay attention to the trailer, so I wasn't sure what I was in for. That would be a grave mistake on my end as a cinephile because you gotta prepare for a shit show like this. I'm easily sold with a sci fi adventure, but I should've known this wasn't gonna well. The directing duo of Scott Beck & Bryan Woods fail to impress me an end up providing an absolute mess of what could've been a dope picture. The story would get so predictable to which made it pretty boring. The only thing that truly surprised me was how the dinosaurs don't truly have an impactful presence at all. That is a massive disappointment since that is what benefitted the Jurassic Saga for years. I'm not trying to expect perfection, but I wish the provided visual effects looked more realistic at the very least. Not even the given set pieces for the ships looked cool enough and that hurts for me to say because production design usually does wonders for movies of any quality. The worst of it all is that I don't feel any chemistry between Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt. That stings big time because I know how talented actors they are leading up to this. I know Driver plays it straight when portraying Mills as a guy whose regaining his motivation to live after such a loss, but I'm mostly rooting for Koa because she's an innocent kid who doesn't fully understand the gravity of the situation until the end. The only scene I naturally enjoyed was the credit sequence. Not because the movie was over, but it showed an impressive display of evolution our planet went through. If anything had the patience, it was the execution towards that. Since this story is like I said predictable, it is filled with a lot of shit that is either not handled properly or just doesn't make any sense at all. For instance, if Somaris is supposed to be an advanced planet, why the fuck should they still have healthcare issues before Earth does? This is a lame ass excuse to get Mills on rockbottom before he meets Koa. The worst part is that the ship didn't even have a shield to protect itself from the asteroid. I mean the excuses just don't line up here. And if shields weren't possible, there should've been autopilot to avoid running into an obstacle like such. I can understand things are flown out of control when ships crash land and that would include people, but it's very overdramatic for the reveal of the dead passengers to be spread out all over the swamp while Koa is the only one conveniently still in her cryo chamber. That's more stupid than the dinosaur hiding in the swamp not trying to kill Mills when it had the jump on Mills. I don't want to pick on Koa since she doesn't know better, but it throws me off on how she originally chose to follow Mills when feeling afraid of him. If she was afraid, she wouldn't have followed him. It was cool for Mills to have a spray to patch up his wound, but then pointless when he didn't start taking antibiotics. If his planet really doesn't have that either, I don't understand how they've lasted so long. I was scared that an insect crawled into Koa's mouth before the theropod comes near the cave, but that could've been avoided if she had a face mask like the one she wore earlier after she got out of her cryo-chamber. And I respect the chance to allow the leads to bond over whistling where it helps Mills know Koa is okay, but I refuse to believe she was that loud in the cave as she got out. It's very convenient for the escape shuttle to be functional, but would it be bad for Mills to have a working translator? That would be more convincing than him trying to talk to Koa inher native tongue for the first time. Ignoring this would be really hard to pull off enjoying the film overall. To get this over with, 65 is easily one of the worst movies of the year for lacking patience to give proper depth in what could've been a wicked sci fi flick. If the said genre is up your alley, avoid this at all costs.
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