Watched in the cinema (6th visit in 2022)

"The 355" wants to place itself tonally between Bond and Bourne. And in terms of production, it's easy to see who the role models are here. The staging is really well done in parts. Especially in the second third, there are some action scenes that don't quite move on Bourne level, but manage to skillfully use a lot of cuts without letting them degenerate into an indiscriminate massacre of cuts. Still, I want to note that especially at the beginning of the film, a lot of it looks like it was intentional, but not skillful. The first scene was like a wannabe "Tenet" opening. There is a strange mixture of disorienting shaky-cam scenes and ones, especially chase sequences, that seem strangely ponderous, almost like they are on rails, so you find the two extremes of failed dynamics. Still, the solid action prevails and there are some scenes that are really fun to watch.

Contrasting these scenes is a laughable story that is at best expedient in the middle section and really bad at the beginning and end. The exposition in particular is terribly messy and fails to introduce any of the characters sensibly. "The 355" "helps" itself in the course of the film by making up for it with an excess of exposition dialogues. Constantly, what is actually to be thought is spoken, which sometimes leads to horrible dialogues. But not only the dialogues are laughable, but also the presentation of the actual danger cyberterrorism. Hacking and the basic operation of software fulfills all the clichés, which in combination with characters who always throw around arbitrary IT terms while dealing with the code is hard to bear.

What is always interesting to observe in a film that deals with international intelligence is the political side of such a film. In the case of "The 355," I want to address three main things.

First, there is the portrayal of cyberterrorism, or the fundamental statement about threats to international security. This is because the film gets very explicit about depicting a depoliticization of threats compared to earlier times. Jessica Chastain, who is also the producer of the film, has herself said in an interview that many spy and agent films are too nationalistic. She said they wanted to change this with the film. Thus, private individuals who are only interested in power and money and have no ideological or cultural aspirations are in charge in the film. This element is presented in a somewhat simplistic way, but similar observations can tend to be made in reality over the past years and decades.

This aspect of the film is interesting in combination with another. Thus, the sense of an agent's life and also the functionality of entire intelligence services, especially the CIA, are increasingly questioned, as they are too unstable and susceptible to corruption, etc. The contrast that China presents in this regard is remarkable. At this point, it should be mentioned that "The 355" clearly has the Chinese film market in mind. For example, the film is set in Shanghai for quite a while, features a prominent cast including Fan Bingbing, and is also co-financed by a Chinese production company. So it's not surprising that China is portrayed in a positive light. Although the film deliberately tries to avoid addressing the Chinese government, it clearly focuses on the beautiful aspects of Chinese culture and the functionality of the secret service and the police. Thus, while the film does not address it, it implies clear competence advantages of the authoritarian Chinese system over the more liberal Western one.

Lastly, the feminist side of the film needs to be addressed. Especially in the first half there are exciting observations about prejudices, the systematic discrimination of women and the power relations between men and women. The relationship of Jessica Chastain and Sebastian Stan's characters are particularly interesting. Unfortunately, the film increasingly devalues these clever and subtle observations in the second half, as many of these things are addressed by the characters and dismissed with one liners. This could be understood as a gesture of emancipation, but due to the chaotic structure of the film and the characters as well as the bad writing, it mostly seems rather out of place and rather as if one wants to address the problems at all costs, so that either every person gets them served on a silver platter and doesn't have to think about the overall social context, or worse, because the people involved themselves didn't understand to what extent the topic was already addressed in supposedly non-political scenes.