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You’d think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn’t possibly be boring, but that’s exactly what “65” is.

This is a movie that would have benefitted from being a whole lot stupider. The big-budget sci-fi flick—which reportedly cost $91 million to make and was featured in a Super Bowl ad—should have embraced its inherent B-movie roots. Instead, it tries to juggle a wild survival story with a poignant family drama, but both elements feel so rushed and underdeveloped that neither ends up registering. There’s nothing to these characters, and the action sequences quickly grow repetitive and wearisome. There’s a jump scare, insistent notes from an overbearing score, some running and screaming, the gnashing of teeth, and maybe an injury before a narrow escape. Over and over and over again.

But the film from the writing-directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods , whose credits include co-writing “ A Quiet Place ” with John Krasinski , offers an intriguingly contradictory premise. It takes place 65 million years ago, but suggests that futuristic civilizations existed back then on planets throughout the universe. On one of them, Driver stars as a space pilot named Mills. He’s about to embark on a two-year exploratory mission in order to afford medical treatment for his ailing daughter ( Chloe Coleman from “ My Spy ,” who’s featured in the film’s prelude and sporadic video snippets).

On the way to his destination, the ship Mills is flying enters an unexpected asteroid field, gets torn to shreds, and crashes. All of the passengers in cryogenic sleep are killed—except one, who just happens to be a girl around the same age as his daughter. Her name is Koa, and she’s played by Ariana Greenblatt . And the planet, which has swampy terrain reminiscent of Dagobah, just happens to be—wait for it—Earth.

“65” requires Mills and Koa to schlep from the wreckage to a mountaintop so they can commandeer the escape pod that’s perched there and fly out before dinosaurs can stomp and chomp on them. The creatures can be startling at times, but at other times they look so cheesy and fake, they’re like the animatronics you’d see at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. And yet! It almost would have been better—or at least more entertaining—if “65” had leaned harder into that silliness if it had played with the basic ridiculousness of mixing complex technology with the Cretaceous period. They rarely use Mills’ advanced gadgets in any inspired ways within this prehistoric setting. The few attempts at humor fall flat—they mainly consist of Koa making fun of Mills for being uptight—and moments of peril wrap up too tidily for us to luxuriate in their anxiety. 

Worst of all, Driver doesn’t get to ham it up nearly enough here. He’s an actor of great intensity, which can be both thrilling and amusing if he’s amping it up in a knowing way. Imagine him screaming “More!!!” as he’s blasting Luke Skywalker in “ Star Wars: The Last Jedi ,” or punching a wall during an argument in “ Marriage Story .” But the man he plays in “65” is blandly heroic and just seems generally annoyed. Greenblatt, meanwhile, does the best she can with a character we know absolutely nothing about. Koa speaks a language that’s not English, so most of her exchanges with Mills consist of mimicking the basic words he says to her, including “family.” There’s no real bond between them, but neither is there any sort of prickly tension since they’re stuck with each other. “The Last of Us,” this is not.

Beck and Woods offer some clever camerawork here and there, but also some erratic editing choices. And they borrow quite a bit from the “ Jurassic Park ” franchise: a giant footprint in the mud or a dinosaur’s yellow eye leering menacingly through a window. But maybe that’s inevitable at this point. Their film only gets truly enjoyably nutty toward the end, with its climactic combination of a sneaky quicksand patch, a ravenous Tyrannosaurus rex, a well-timed geyser eruption, and a catastrophic asteroid shower. But by then, it’s too late for us—and the planet.

Now in theaters. 

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images.

Adam Driver as Mills

Ariana Greenblatt as Koa

Chloe Coleman as Nevine

Nika King as Alya

• Bryan Woods

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• Chris Bacon

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Sodden sci-fi that somehow finds a way to bungle Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs, 65 is closer to zero.

Although it's silly, predictable, and sort of slow, 65 's missed opportunities are mostly balanced out by solid survival thriller action.

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An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone. An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone. An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone.

• Bryan Woods
• Adam Driver
• Ariana Greenblatt
• Chloe Coleman
• 931 User reviews
• 176 Critic reviews
• 40 Metascore
• 1 nomination

• Nevine's Mom

• (uncredited)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The warning sound made by the ship's computer just after the crash was first used as the sound effect for the Martian walkers in The War of the Worlds (1953) .
• Goofs At exactly 21:48 Mills is walking through some pine trees and the tree on his left has a red spray paint marking on it. The trailer reveals that these marks were made by Mills. However the scene was scrapped. (He later uses this powder substance to draw a map in it.)

Mills : It's not because of you; it's for you!

• Crazy credits The TSG Entertainment logo dissolves into stars in space, leading directly into the opening shot of the movie, which is a long pan through celestial wonders of space, until the planet Somaris comes into view.
• Connections Featured in AniMat's Crazy Cartoon Cast: Part of Halle's World (2022)

User reviews 931

• used_to_like_movies
• Mar 11, 2023
• How long is 65? Powered by Alexa
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• March 10, 2023 (United States)
• United States
• Cuộc Chiến Thời Tiền Sử
• Bray, Ireland
• Bron Creative
• Columbia Pictures
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $45,000,000 (estimated)
• $32,062,904
• $12,328,361
• Mar 12, 2023
• $60,730,568

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• Runtime 1 hour 33 minutes
• Dolby Digital
• Dolby Atmos

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‘65’ Trailer: Adam Driver Fights Dinosaurs in Sci-Fi Thriller From ‘A Quiet Place’ Writers

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Though two-time Oscar nominee Adam Driver wrapped his performance as Kylo Ren in the “Star Wars” sequel trilogy, his work in the sci-fi genre is far from over. The trailer for Sony Pictures’ upcoming feature “ 65 ” sees Driver return to outer space — but this time, as an astronaut who crash lands on Earth… 65 million years ago.

According to the movie’s logline, “Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills (Driver) and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.”

Popular on Variety

“65” is a co-production between Beck/Woods, the directing and writing duo’s production company, as well as Columbia Pictures and Raimi Productions. Raimi, who produced cult classics like “The Evil Dead,” previously worked with Beck and Woods on an episode of his Quibi series “50 States of Fright.”

Danny Elfman , who worked on Raimi’s projects like the early 2000s “Spider-Man” trilogy and 2022’s “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” has signed on to score “65.” Elfman has composed over 100 film scores, most recently for Noah Baumbach’s 2022 film “White Noise,” also starring Driver.

“65” wrapped production in February 2021 but has had its release date pushed several times over the last year. The movie will premiere in U.S. theaters on March 10, 2023, via Sony Pictures Releasing.

Watch the trailer below.

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10 Mar 2023

Given they are the subject of the one-time biggest box-office hit in history ( Jurassic Park , naturally), it’s a wonder that Hollywood hasn’t embraced dinosaurs more. Bringing the wildest dreams of small children to life seems like an obvious win for blockbuster filmmakers looking for some paleontological pleasures at the picturehouse; special effects wizards like Ray Harryhausen and Phil Tippett once kept them alive in the cinematic imagination but these days, outside of the ongoing Jurassic series, big-screen dinosaurs are a rare beast.

Now, finally, comes this dino-disaster-movie from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who have — as with their script for A Quiet Place — sketched another simple but effective sci-fi premise: what if a spaceman from another world crash-landed on our planet, 65 million years ago, at the tail end of the Cretaceous Period? It’s a basic idea which reframes dinosaurs not as the terrible lizards of wonder that captivated young minds in science classes, but deadly, terrifyingly unknown aliens.

This is a very straightforward, efficient kind of blockbuster. Following some rather gloopy exposition back on his home planet which establishes him as a stock-in-trade Sad Dad, Adam Driver ’s Mills crash lands on Earth within ten minutes. There is so little flab here, it is almost skeletal: not counting the prehistoric beasties, there are only four speaking roles, and one of them doesn’t even speak English. That would be Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), Mills’ fellow survivor, quickly taking the role of surrogate daughter for his real one, who is suffering from an unspecified illness (we’ll call it ‘Character Motivation Syndrome’).

65 breaks no new ground. But it is a short, sharp, largely original studio movie.

In the spaceman-falling-to-a-planet-that-turns-out-to-be-ours setup, there are faint echoes of Planet Of The Apes , but Beck and Woods aren’t especially interested in making any kind of satirical commentary on our world, past or present. Instead the film lurches into a lean genre exercise, a survivalist thriller that occasionally draws from the filmmakers’ horror background. The sheer hostility of prehistoric nature means peril is always lurking, the experience always at some degree of stress.

It plays more or less as you might expect: there are problems that require solving; there is a journey requiring the characters to get from A to B; there is, unhelpfully, the odd Tyrannosaurus rex in between those two points. The dinosaurs are fun and frightening (even if — sorry, paleontologists! — none of them have feathers here), and while plot holes loom like falling asteroids, it is at the very least handsomely presented, blending epic landscape cinematography — including lush location shooting in Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest — with solid, subtle CGI.

It’s also bound together by a typically compelling Adam Driver performance. As he did in three Star Wars films , Driver brings a thoughtfulness to his genre character even when the screenplay doesn’t, a humanistic approach that grounds the bombastic silliness around him. He shares an easy warmth with Greenblatt, too, despite their characters speaking different languages, her character having hailed from the "upper territories" of their home planet. They commit, admirably, to the project at hand.

65 breaks no new cinematic ground, upends no rules, challenges no clichés. But it is a short, sharp, largely original major studio movie, unbound to any franchise or intellectual property — at a time when such a concept is being threatened with extinction. Also, it has a T-Rex in it. Sometimes, that’s enough.

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‘65’ trailer pits adam driver against dinosaurs after space mission gone wrong.

The sci-fi flick, directed by 'A Quiet Place' writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, hits theaters in March and counts Sam Raimi as a producer.

By Ryan Gajewski

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Adam Driver is facing off against dinosaurs in the first full trailer for Sony Pictures ‘ sci-fi thriller 65 .

Set 65 million years in the past, the film centers on a spacecraft pilot named Mills who realizes he and a child, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), are the only two survivors of a crash on a mysterious planet. The two of them soon find themselves battling dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures as they attempt to return home.

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The trailer, which calls to mind the Jurassic Park franchise, shows Mills and Koa doing their best to band together and outlast their unlikely foes. “You need to be quiet — and move,” Mills tells Koa in a key moment from the spot. “You and I are going to get home.”

Driver, known for playing Kylo Ren in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, can next be seen in Noah Baumbach’s White Noise , which hits Netflix on Dec. 30. Driver’s part in the film adaptation of Don DeLillo’s acclaimed novel earned the actor a Golden Globe nomination earlier this week.

He is a four-time Emmy nominee, three of which came for his work on HBO’s Girls , and has earned Oscar noms for his roles in BlacKkKlansman (2018) and Marriage Story (2019).

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Summary After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth…65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in a ... Read More

Directed By : Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Written By : Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

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Flickering Myth

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Movie Review – 65 (2023)

March 10, 2023 by Robert Kojder

Written and Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. Starring Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Alexandra Shipp, and Nika King.

After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth…65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa, must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.

It’s practically impossible for a film not to have clichés. Everyone understands that. However, 65 , the prehistoric survival thriller from A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, seems to have been re-engineered by Sony or someone to have anything original about it and any semblance of world-building stripped out, hoping that a straightfaced Adam Driver as a transporter determined to protect a young girl speaking another language, the only cryo- stasis passenger that survived an asteroid sending his space vessel down to Earth circa 65,000,000 years ago (and just in case you never passed first grade, the opening credits make abundantly clear that’s what the title is referring to).

Astronaut Mills (Driver) has reluctantly accepted a job that will last roughly two years and keep him away from his terminally ill daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman), but hopefully, provide them with enough financial compensation to get her life-changing treatment. Fortunately, Nevine does understand, although she comes to criticize his choice across a series of videos Mills receives throughout the trip, played in succession and montage form, getting sicker and missing her father more. That’s about as emotional as 65 gets.

65 is minimalistic and muted to a fault (I couldn’t tell you a damn thing about the planet Mills comes from or anything about these intergalactic civilizations dating that far back). Once he discovers that young Koa (Ariana Greenblatt) has survived the crash, 65 becomes a transparent parallel of a father compelled to protect a child when he couldn’t be there for his daughter. The filmmakers also don’t do nearly enough to develop any meaningful bond between his two characters, forcing them through a forest to reach a mountaintop where a working escape vessel might be.

One might also presume that the above is good because it would allow 65 to focus on the tantalizing prospect of Adam Driver mowing down dinosaurs with an energy-based space firearm, but even that is tedious and monotonous. From a design standpoint, nothing is especially intriguing about the forest; the smaller dinosaurs are poorly rendered during the daytime. As such, there is no suspense or intensity in watching Mills occasionally kill these creatures with one blast. Even during the climax, when it’s revealed that something big will happen (something you can probably guess from the movie’s title), there is still a lack of urgency and excitement. 

There’s also the sense that Scott Beck and Bryan Woods are trying to create A Quiet Place but replaced with dinosaurs in a different setting. The silence aspect is still there, and, at one point, Mills grabs Koa and brings her down to the ground to hide in what looks like a shot-for-shot takeaway from that movie or homage. Then there’s the fact that 65 is a movie about dinosaurs that doesn’t know how to have any fun. It’s committed to a slow-burn style that doesn’t work when everything about the movie is a walking cliché.

Flickering Myth Rating  – Film: ★ ★  / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , or email me at [email protected]

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65: Everything You Need to Know About Adam Driver's New Sci-Fi Dinosaur Movie - Netflix Tudum

‘65’: Everything to Know About Adam Driver’s New Sci-Fi Dinosaur Thriller

“I’ve crash-landed on an uncharted celestial body,” Adam Driver, as captain Mills, intones in the opening minutes of 65, the new sci-fi action-adventure thriller from the writers of A Quiet Place. “I don’t know where we are.”

Or perhaps the word should be “when ” : 65, that is, meaning 65 million years ago. Driver, last seen piloting a suburban station wagon through the airborne toxic event haunting the world of White Noise , stars here as captain of a spaceship from the planet Somaris that crashes into extremely ancient Earth. It’s been more than a year since he’s seen his wife and his daughter. His only surviving passenger? An orphaned young girl, Koa, from the upper territories, who’s just emerged from a cryogenic chamber. (She is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who is making waves elsewhere this summer in Barbie. ) Neither speak the same language, but it’s clear that the only way to survive will be to find their way out. Amid showers of asteroids and falling rock, they battle dinosaurs and quicksand in search of their last hope for escape.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (both among the writers of postapocalyptic thriller A Quiet Place ) team up with legendary filmmaker Sam Raimi ( The Evil Dead, Spider-Man ) for their directorial debut: a sci-fi action thriller with nods to The Last of Us and Jurassic Park and, below the surface, an emotional backstory with echoes of Station Eleven.

Popular Now

When will  65 be released?

Stream it now .

Who’s in the cast of 65 ?

• Adam Driver ( White Noise, Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens, Marriage Story ) as Mills, captain of the spaceship
• Ariana Greenblatt ( Barbie, Avengers: Infinity War ) as Koa, Mills’ only surviving passenger
• Chloe Coleman ( Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Big Little Lies ) as Nevine, Mills’ daughter
• Nika King ( Euphoria, Greenleaf ) as Alya, Mills’ wife

What happens in  65 ?

Mills, an astronaut living on the planet Somaris, makes the tough decision to undergo a two-year space exploratory expedition. While the mission will take him away from his wife, Alya and daughter Nevine, he has little choice. His situation is unfortunately relatable: In the midst of a health care crisis, the job promises him enough money to be able to pay to treat Nevine’s life-threatening illness. 

Trouble is, the spaceship runs aground before he can make it back to his family. Blasting past asteroids, Mills has met his match, crashing on a strange planet that he doesn’t know is actually Earth — only, it’s Earth 65 million years ago. Quicksand threatens to swallow up anyone who is passing through and T. rexes roam the alternately harsh and beautiful landscape. The cryogenic chambers that Mills’ ship were transporting are all lost, along with the passengers inside of them — all but one, a girl apparently close to the age of Nevine. Koa, he learns, is her name and though she doesn’t speak English, he must urgently make her understand that they’re not safe here. The ship’s escape chamber is up high on a mountain and it’s their only hope for survival. There’s no time to waste.

Is  65  based on a book?

No, 65 is not based on a book.

Where does  65 take place?

Perhaps the question is not so much where, but when. The story takes place 65 million years ago — hence the title — on very ancient Earth.

Where was 65 filmed?

Location filming for 65 took place primarily in the vicinity of New Orleans, as well as in Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana’s only national forest, in the winter of 2020 and 2021. Kisatchie was chosen by the filmmakers because of its varied topography, including hills and dense forest.

After surviving a crash landing, an astronaut and his passenger must outlast the perils of prehistoric Earth to reach their only hope for escape.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Violent, by-the-numbers sci-fi/dinosaur movie has gory bits.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Encourages selflessness: One character considers g

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they t

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man,

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during cra

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of

Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills (Adam Driver) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt). Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's…

Positive Messages

Encourages selflessness: One character considers giving up until he discovers that there's another person to think about.

Positive Role Models

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they take turns helping each other out of scrapes, working to overcome difficult odds.

Diverse Representations

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man, is the central character. Young Koa is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who is of Puerto Rican heritage. Mills' wife (seen in prologue), played by Nika King, is Black. Their mixed-race daughter, Nevine, is played by Chloe Coleman, who is of African, Eastern European, and English descent. Mills' insistence on Koa learning English -- rather than trying to understand her language -- supports dominant power structures.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during crash-landing. Dead bodies lie in a swamp. Girl in peril. Main character shoots laser-like space gun. Splattering dinosaur blood. Explosions. Main character pulls metal shard out of bloody wound. Character attacked by small dinosaur; he bashes it to death with gun butt. Main character falls out of tree; painfully snapping dislocated shoulder back into place. Dinosaur stabbed with pointed tusk. Quicksand. Dinosaur corpse covered in blood and maggots. Burned, gory dinosaur corpse. Red-tinted water sloshing on ship. Fiery crash-landing. Dinosaurs attack and eat one another. Asteroids colliding with ship. Main character briefly considers death by suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of "oh God" while in pain.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills ( Adam Driver ) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ). Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's splattering dinosaur blood/gore, and Mills pulls a shard of metal out of his own bloody wound. Mills also shoots a space-laser gun at dinosaurs and bashes a small dinosaur to death with the butt of his gun. There are also explosions and falls from high places, and a character briefly considers death by suicide. A girl is sometimes in peril. Language includes a few uses of "s--t," plus "damn" and "oh God." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (6)
• Kids say (10)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Dinosaurs look awesome

Decent popcorn flick but huge missed opportunity, what's the story.

In 65, astronaut Mills ( Adam Driver ), from the planet Somaris, agrees to a two-year trip through space, since the increased pay will help cover his daughter's medical expenses. Unfortunately, while he's in cryosleep, the ship is pelted with asteroids and forced to make a crash landing. Only Mills and young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ) survive. But somehow, they've ended up on Earth, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs roamed. Now they must hike 15 kilometers across a deadly landscape to find the only remaining escape pod. And there's another problem: The asteroid that hit their ship was only a small one.

Is It Any Good?

While this sci-fi/dinosaur movie is competently made, it really only has one good idea, and it doesn't do much with it. The rest is generic and familiar and fails to generate much suspense or emotion. The first thing viewers must accept in 65 is that there's another planet that has inhabitants who speak English and act just like Earth humans. After the crash, we get all the usual CGI dinosaur attacks and jump scares -- all very similar to what we've seen before in the many Jurassic Park / World movies. The screenplay -- following a beat-by-beat, three-act formula -- sets up all the elements it's going to use during the final payoff, and it's all noticeable because there's not much else to think about. But perhaps the oddest touch in this movie is the decision to have Koa speak a different language (she's from a different "district" than Mills). This leads to many scenes of Mills trying to force Koa to learn English words -- which she gamely does -- rather than him trying to understand what she's saying. It's all a bit of a drag, like Land of the Lost with the fun taken out. Ultimately, 65 leaves us feeling dino-sore.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about 65 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How does the movie handle the difference in the languages that the characters speak? How does the language barrier affect the story?

How does the movie deal with grief?

Movie Details

• In theaters : March 10, 2023
• On DVD or streaming : May 2, 2023
• Cast : Adam Driver , Ariana Greenblatt , Chloe Coleman
• Directors : Scott Beck , Bryan Woods
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studios : Sony Pictures , Columbia Pictures
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Topics : Dinosaurs
• Run time : 93 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images
• Last updated : July 29, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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'65' Review: Adam Driver Can Save You From Dinosaurs, But Not This Disaster of a Movie

Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs should be a winning action romp, but this lackluster film is destined to go extinct from your memory.

There is something remarkable about how completely 65 wastes all it had going for it. Taking Adam Driver , one of the best actors working today, and throwing him onto a prehistoric Earth where he has to fight dinosaurs seems like it could be a solid little action flick. Whoever it was that edited the film’s trailer together should be given a raise, as it made it seem like the final product might actually be a thrilling science fiction ride that could possibly even bring some notes of horror. Instead, what we got is a poorly constructed work doomed by its derivative and dull narrative core.

Though it is aggressively simple, 65 manages to become as lost as its characters as they wander through fields, woods, and caves without any momentum behind them. There are occasional glimpses of the fun that could have been had and Driver is never phoning it in, even as he has basically nothing to work with. The trouble is that it can’t overcome what proves to be an unimaginative experience that is further hampered by poor direction, writing, effects, and everything a film needs to hold together.

This all begins with on-screen text informing us of the necessary information to understand that our humanoid protagonist Mills (Driver) is actually part of an entirely different species than our own. Living on a planet that is far from Earth, he is about to take on a job that will whisk him away from his family for two years. As he prepares to say goodbye to his wife and daughter, who is in poor health of some kind, we learn he is doing this so that they can afford proper treatment. The fact that this species with the capacity to travel through space is still one where healthcare is not accessible to all is a grim prospect, but there is no interest in exploring this as it is all about getting the story in motion. Even then, it feels like it is stalling.

RELATED: The 10 Best Adam Driver Performances, Ranked

While 65 was never going to be a particularly heady work of science fiction, both the narrative underpinnings and their execution are so empty that everything increasingly rings hollow even as it incessantly hammers home the same superficial elements. The inciting incident is that the ship that Mills is piloting flies straight into an asteroid field. This happens while he is asleep, and they subsequently crash down to Earth, their ship breaking into two parts. The only other surviving passenger of the many in cryosleep is the young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ), who Mills must then protect as they travel to the other part of the ship they hope to use to escape.

A narrative built around traveling from point A to point B could work to keep the emphasis on the action. After all, the selling point of the experience is getting to see Driver take on various dinos. Much like the recent Jurassic World sequel, that is not something that 65 sufficiently capitalizes on. Further, the déjà vu that is felt when it too becomes oddly fixated on bugs does it absolutely no favors. What should have been a stripped-down story is made into an overwrought and ambling film where the staging of the action ensures that it only rarely carries any actual weight.

From the first moment Mills encounters one of his few dinosaur foes as he goes out to get his bearings, the effects are painfully unconvincing no matter how much Driver dutifully rolls around. This becomes a persistent problem that the film will occasionally get around by using darkness as a cover, but that can only go so far. They are often bigger than the dinosaurs in something like Jurassic Park , but the way it integrates them into the story just falls flat. Those effects have aged better because they aren’t just built around throwing a lot at the screen, but about being more precise in how they are used. The longer that 65 drags on, the more it reveals it lacks anything approaching a creative vision.

Take when Mills and Koa are attacked under a tree, the first truly dangerous encounter the two have. Rather than feel tense, they just seem disconnected from the supposedly approaching creatures. We know from the cutting back and forth that they are getting closer, though we are never given a shot to establish the distance that is being closed. It leans on the committed performance of Driver to convey the character’s panic, but we never feel it in the way the scene is constructed. Not once do you ever think that either of them are in any real danger, no matter how much the film tries to insist that they are. Whenever they are just on the verge of being in actual trouble, they get saved at the last possible second. It robs the film of any sense of stakes, making it hard to actually care about any of the subsequent escalations it throws out. Making matters worse is that the back-and-forth the characters have is all painfully one-note. Much of this stems from how Koa speaks a language that Mills does not understand, essentially reducing her to being a surrogate daughter with no depth that she gets on her own. Greenblatt gives it her all, but she is fighting an uphill battle from start to finish.

All of this could be forgiven if the film were actually fun in how it played around with its premise. It was never going to be a masterpiece by any means, but it is bizarre just how boring it all feels. The main event of it all, Driver fighting a T-rex, is something the film teases for all its worth before it unfolds in the conclusion. This proves to be disappointing as, after all this wait, the sequence just doesn’t feel worth it and passes rather quickly. Once more, the persistent problem is how disconnected the two adversaries are and how poorly staged the entire thing remains. When you then look back on the entire experience, it is fascinating how fleeting it is and how little of an impact it all leaves. Though there are movies that are worse than 65 , it is part of a select few that manage to utterly and completely squander their own potential.

65 is in theaters now.

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65: Release Date, Trailer, Songs, Cast

• Release Date 10 March 2023
• Language English
• Dubbed In Hindi, Tamil, Telugu
• Genre Adventure, Drama, Sci-Fi
• Duration 1h 32min
• Cast Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King
• Director Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
• Writer Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
• Cinematography Salvatore Totino
• Music Danny Elfman
• Producer Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, Zainab Azizi, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods
• Production Columbia Pictures, Bron Creative, Raimi Productions, Beck Woods
• Certificate 13+

About 65 Movie (2023)

After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he’s actually stranded on Earth …65 million years ago. Now, with only one chance at rescue, Mills and the only other survivor, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), must make their way across an unknown terrain riddled with dangerous prehistoric creatures in an epic fight to survive.

65 Movie Cast, Release Date, Trailer, Songs and Ratings

65 Movie Trailer

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