In a lot of ways, 65 as a movie reminds me of World War Z. That movie more or less sold itself on being a standard zombie movie but with the presence of big-name actor Brad Pitt. Likewise, 65 feels like a film that exists for one simple purpose: someone thought it would be really cool to get Adam Driver to fight Dinosaurs.

The film does deliver on this premise, you will see Adam Driver survive against an assortment of cretaceous critters but the execution feels a little too safe and standard. The movie doesn’t do anything you haven’t seen before, from the characters to the fights. It’s not bad just thoroughly ok.

65 Million Years Ago

65 stars Mills (Adam Driver) is a space driver from an alien planet who takes a 2-year job involving shipping people in cryostasis to another planet to support his wife and sick daughter. After colliding with an asteroid storm, he crashes onto a nearby planet that turns out to be Earth 65 million years in the past, during the time of the Dinosaurs.

After exploring the location he finds out that only one of his passengers has survived, a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) who speaks a foreign language that he doesn’t understand. The two must now travel across the land and survive the various dinosaurs trying to eat them along the way with Mills only having a futuristic shotgun to protect them. 

Jurassic Planet

The plot is a very standard action survival movie. It moves at a fast pace, after quickly establishing Mills’ backstory with his daughter before quickly cutting to his ship crashing down. It wants to get you to the dino fights as soon as possible which is good since that’s what we’re here for but also comes with some detriments. 

The fact that it moves at such a brisk pace means that many of the emotional beats don’t have enough time to sink in and you don’t feel the intended impact. Once the duo is journeying they have your standard father-surrogate daughter bonding scenes: she tries to prank him, they rest by the river, and there is a lot of time dedicated to reminding you that Mills has a daughter that he needs to get back to.

You don’t really feel the connection between the characters though because of how quickly each scene is over and done with. It honestly feels like the movie is going down a checklist. Like the writers are putting in moments they feel they have to include because they’re expected to be in these kinds of action stories but without really understanding why they’re important.

Running From The Dinosaurs

Of course, this is an action movie and the most important part is the action: watching Adam Driver drive away the Dinosaurs so he can in turn drive his ship off the planet. In all fairness to the movie, the dino fight scenes are pretty well done. The ancient reptiles are fast and have a good sense of viciousness that makes it fun to watch Mills shoot at them. I also like that they’re not indestructible, and can be taken down with bullets so the characters can do more than just run away. That being said I do have an issue with the Dinos themselves.

Now I could go on about how all the Dinosaurs are therapods [meat-eating dinosaurs] or how despite decades of proof Hollywood still refuses to put feathers on them but these aren’t that big of an issue. What is a problem is how ugly these creatures look and the fact that some of the dinosaurs aren’t even real dinosaurs. They’re these strangely proportioned CGI lizard things that look more like something that got rejected from a Monster Hunter game. Some people might be ok with this but I feel the fun of Dinosaur movies is actually seeing more accurate reconstructions of real dinosaurs. If you’re expecting something with the sense of wonder of Jurassic Park, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

I also noticed that the CGI for all the creatures has a rather rubbery texture, making them feel even more alien and less like actual animals. I found myself wondering my they decided to set the movie on prehistoric Earth when it could easily take place on a fictional alien planet that would allow them to really go crazy with the monster designs. That seems like what they wanted to do.

Our Two Survivors

65 has a short cast consisting of mainly three characters. Adam Driver truly is the star of the picture as Mills. He doesn’t have a lot to work with from the script, playing the stock soldier character (even if he’s not actually a soldier) but he does a good job of squeezing as much personality as possible into the role. Driver’s acting style of a cool demeanor mixed with a vulnerable and emotional edge is one good display here. You can see him being badass and doing a decent job at interacting with a child he can’t actually speak with while also seeing his clear anguish at being trapped on this hostile planet. 

As far as child actors go, Ariana Greenblatt also does well as the young girl Koa. Convincingly playing a child and one speaking a made-up language can be difficult but she manages to pull it off in a way that sounds natural. You may not understand her words but you always understand what she’s saying through how she emotes and through her body language. 

The final character is Chloe Coleman as Mill’s daughter who appears throughout the film through recordings as flashbacks. It’s hard to talk about her without spoiling anything but she does a good job with the limited script. She’s there pretty much to be the loving daughter our main hero wants to get back to but she does her best with the material.

65

As I said at the beginning, it feels like this movie exists because someone thought it’d be cool to see a big-name actor fight some Dinosaurs but there’s not enough to the movie beyond that. The action is decent and the acting from the cast is well-performed overall but it’s held back by how safe and standard everything is. 

If you’ve seen any action movie over the last two decades you’ve seen this movie. The hardened soldier figure, the loving family he wants to return to, the naive new child figure he must protect, and this isn’t even going into the poorly designed B-movie monsters that they call dinosaurs. It’s possible to take old story formulas and make them feel new again, Cocaine Bear was able to do just that last month but I can’t help but think 65’s execution felt a bit too fossilized. 

I know it sounds like I’ve been pretty harsh on the movie but I must stress it’s not bad, it’s just nothing special. If the idea of Adam Driver fighting some dinos in the jungle sounds fun, you’ll probably enjoy the movie as a dumb popcorn flick but otherwise, it’s just too barebones.

65 is now screening in cinemas across Malaysia.