PREHISTORIC SPACEMAN (65)
Not long after Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsay were battling zombies on the small screen in 'The Last of Us,' cinema audiences were served up this year Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt battling dinosaurs.
Scott Beck and Bryan Woods' '65' shares a similar dynamic to Craig Maxin and Neil Druckmann's acclaimed HBO series.
Both feature a man and a young girl thrown into each other's orbit in the most dangerous of circumstances.
Just like 'The Last of Us,' the two characters are plunged into a world where they must live by their wits as monsters threaten their existence.
In both, a surrogate father and daughter relationship develops.
Unlike 'The Last of Us,' though, '65' doesn't have gaming origins.
Although it's easy to see how it could be turned into a game.
A curious mix of sci-fi and monster movies tropes, it tells the story of Driver's pilot Mills who is encouraged by his wife (voiced by Nika King) to take on a two year space mission to pay for their seriously ill daughter, Chloe Coleman's Nevine's medical treatment.
The passenger spaceship Mills is steering, however, gets knocked off course by an asteroid shower and crash lands on an alien planet.
We soon realise the planet is actually prehistoric Earth, with dinosaurs roaming the land.
Mills' spaceship is damaged beyond repair and all but one of the passengers he has been ferrying in a cryogenic sleep have died.
The survivor is Arianna Greenblatt's Koa who is roughly the same age as Nevine.
Neither Koa nor Mills share the same language and the translator usually used to communicate in these circumstances is broken.
A firing of a distress beacon by Mills comes to naught.
However he soon realises there's a rescue pod is perched on top of a mountain.
In order to get there, he and Koa face a perilous trek through dangerous forests to get to it.
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© Columbia Pictures & Sony Pictures ReleasingBut first he must persuade his petrified passenger to join him on this journey fraught with danger, so he lies to her - pretending her family have survived the crash and made it to the rescue pod.
As Mills fiercely protects Koa from the roaming dinosaurs, a close bond develops.
But at what cost?
Coming so soon on the back of 'The Last of Us,' comparisons with the HBO show are inevitable.
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These, however, do '65' no favours.
'The Last of Us' takes a popular videogame and turns into a dark exploration of the depths humans will plumb when under existential threat.
The bond between Joel and Ellie in the hostile world of the show is convincing.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann's series also resonates with audiences by taking recent real life events like the pandemic and the rise of populist leaders like Donald Trump and re-imagining them in a dystopian world.
By way of contrast, Beck and Woods' movie has not much to say.
It has all the depth of a PlayStation game.
The film is full of running, shooting, roaring and stabbing.
It just feels like a rip off of the 'Predator,' 'Jurassic Park' and 'Alien' franchises.
© Columbia Pictures & Sony Pictures ReleasingYes, there's touches of 'A Quiet Place' in there too, which isn't surprising as Beck and Woods co-wrote that.
However unlike the 'Quiet Place' movies or 'The Last Of Us,' the characters feel underdeveloped, like they have been hastily sketched out on the back of a cereal box.
Looking for thrills and spills, Beck and Woods and their visual effects team assault the senses but their plot lacks any heft.
Oddly for a 2023 film, its 94 minute running time may be part of the problem, with everything feeling rushed.
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Is this actually a rare example of a movie this year that's too short?
Maybe, although you're not convinced that even if Becks and Woods were given another 20 or 30 minutes to play with, they'd be able to make the most of it.
Faced with an underwhelming script, Driver does his best as the movie's surrogate dad/protector.
However the character of Mills is bland beyond belief, with Driver having very little to offer other than po faced intensity.
Greenblatt is reduced to either looking petrified or trying to grab the odd word of English to bond with Mills.
And while the idea of two characters lacking a shared language is intriguing, it soon becomes clear it acts as a major impediment to character development.
The bond between Mills and Koa comes nowhere near that of Joel and Ellie in 'The Last of Us'.
'65' just has nothing significant to say about the worlds it is trying to depict.
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It's simply a collection of monster movie cliches strung together by a really thin plot.
It's instantly forgettable.
In fact, it's so forgettable that you can't help but feel that on their biggest directorial assignment yet, Becks and Woods have simply bitten off more than they can chew.
('65' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on March 10, 2023)
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