By Jack Bottomley
You just don’t see enough dinosaurs nowadays, especially scary ones. The Jurassic World franchise lately has been the sole provider of major cinema dino-tainment (and curiously killer locusts too), but 65 brings our favourite reptilian rulers (besides the royal family – if you believe those shouty angry YouTube videos) back to the big screen release schedule in ferocious form, with a gun-toting Kylo Ren to boot. Lovely stuff!
From A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who this time step behind the camera, 65 is an original feature (yes, those still exist) produced by Sam Raimi, that sees Adam Driver play pilot Mills, who crash lands on an uncharted planet, and he must battle the dinosaur creatures that rule this world in order to stay alive, and keep the only other survivor, in young girl Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), safe.
By now many of you know the reveal, the trailers and virtually every bit of marketing about this film have revelled in why this is called 65. Though, for the benefit of those who don’t know, we’ll remain tight-lipped, and really the promotion should have too, because it was clear to us early on that this element should have been saved for the cinema, as it is delivered as early twist. So, anyone out there lucky enough to have not seen the trailer, will likely get that bit more out of this.
65 has all the potential in the world and you might call it Interstellar meets Jurassic World, but this genre-spliced offering put us more in mind of Howard McCain’s 2008 Jim Caviezel caper Outlander. And we mean that in a flattering way. Is it perfect? absolutely not. But my word is it nice to see this kind of B-Movie mash on this kind of scale and on the silver screen again. And while tropes are not re-invented here, this sprightly 93-minute film delivered on its promises.
Both the ever reliable Adam Driver and his young co-star Ariana Greenblatt are fantastic, in this tight, to the point, survivalist, story, with a script trimmed of fat, excellent special effects (way bigger fare has looked ten times worse on quadruple the budget) and thunderous bang for buck show opposite some quieter moments of human heart.
The reviews have been velociraptor-like but we’re not sure what people were expecting. It is Adam Driver vs. fierce dinosaurs in a dangerous land. Life changing? Probably not. But fun? You bet your scaly backside! Grab a popcorn, a drink, and walk with some dinosaurs.