65
Sixty-five million years ago there was a man called Adam, Adam Driver.
Bogged down: Ariana Greenblatt and Adam Driver
On this occasion, the first man on earth is Adam Driver. Not Adam, Adam Driver. And the film missed a trick there, as this is less a leaf out of the Book of Genesis as Jurassic Extermination. And we all know what happened sixty-five million years ago. Adam Driver plays an intergalactic pilot called Mills who, for some reason, is going on a two-year journey for his daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman), who has a cough. She stays behind on their planet Somaris and, remember, all coughs in the movies are never good news. It is obvious that he is besotted with Nevine, with whom he shares some quality time on a picturesque beach before the opening title. And she’s equally beloved of him, asking, “why are you so good at everything?” It’s a surprisingly long prologue for a short film but, more than anything else, 65 is about Mills’ survival on a distant planet.
As Mills is piloting his craft through an asteroid belt, his ship is hit and he crash-lands on a world unrecognised by his software. Everybody on board is killed, leaving Mills stranded, alone, on an alien land. The good news is that the atmosphere is “breathable,” the bad that the planet is occupied by giant monsters, as well as ferocious Compsognathuses, the savage dinosaurs we have come to respect from Jurassic Park and its sequels. They are the hyenas of the prehistoric period, except with more teeth. But before then, Mills wanders through this fertile and unfamiliar realm dotted with giant skeletons. He then stumbles upon a child in the wreckage of his ship, a nine-year-old girl going by the name of Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). We then have the set-up of a grown man and a preternaturally photogenic girl, trapped in an alien environment, much like George Clooney and Caoilinn Springall in The Midnight Sky. Except, far from being in the future, we are in a distant eon, albeit with more sophisticated tech. The tech is the film’s strongest suit, with nifty gadgets, including a cryogenic aerosol which heals torn flesh, and a proximity scan, which pinpoints the position of a hidden predator.
Basically, 65 is a series of near escapes, the like of which we have often see before. So we have the quicksand scene, Mills falling out of a tree, and various close encounters with ghastly creatures. Mills, who speaks American English, attempts to teach Koa his own language, rather than deigning to study her own. And so she learns such words as “water”, “flower” and “shit,” which she absorbs with some ease. Mills also lies to the girl, while she exhibits considerable resourcefulness, revealing a surprising knack for survival against the odds. All this gets pretty repetitive after a while, although the location work is glorious, having been shot in Oregon and Ireland. But Driver’s emotional landscape is a more limited affair, which plays against the material. It’s hard to warm to his arrogance, or to care for his fate, leaving Greenblatt to provide any human interest available in this sparsely diverting plod.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Connor Taylor.
Dir Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Pro Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, Zainab Azizi, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Screenplay Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Ph Salvatore Totino, Pro Des Kevin Ishioka, Ed Josh Schaeffer and Jane Tones, Music Chris Bacon, Costumes Michael Kaplan, Sound Mac Smith.
Columbia Pictures/Bron Creative/Raimi Productions/Beck/Woods-Sony Pictures.
92 mins. USA. 2023. UK and US Rel: 10 March 2023. Cert. 12A.
