65: Is It T-Rexcellent?

We need more dinosaur movies.  "But Ben, didn't we get a Jurassic World movie over the summer?" Yes, but that's sort of my problem.  For years, the only dinosaur-related movies we've gotten are from the Jurassic franchise.  Outside of that, the only one there's been was 2015's The Good Dinosaur.  Before that, I think the last one was 2009's Land of the Lost.  This really stinks and the directors of 65 have even acknowledged that.  People talk about Marvel fatigue, but screw that.  I want dinosaur fatigue.  There should be so many movies about dinosaurs that I get tired of talking about them.  This is part of the reason why I was so excited for this movie, because it was an original dino flick.  Going in, I was getting nervous because the reviews had been not the best.  Is it as bad as everyone has been saying?  That's what I'm here to tell you.  Oh and be prepared because I may go full dinosaur nerd for parts of this review.

65 is directed by Bryan Woods and Scott Beck.  It stars Adam Driver, Arianna Greenblatt, and Chloe Coleman.  When Pilot Mills (Driver) crash lands on Earth 65 million years ago, he must take the only survivor, Koa (Coleman),  on a journey to the only way they can get home.  In addition to navigating this unknown world, they will have to fight the prehistoric creatures that live there.  With all of that out of the way, let's dive into the review!

This movie is not nearly as bad as critics are making it out to be.  Does it have problems? Yes and I'll get to those in a bit, but I had a lot of fun with 65.  I feel like 8-year old me would've loved this movie.  Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt really carry this movie, which is good because they're really the only two characters in it.  I was suprised to see that Adam Driver didn't phone in his performance as Mills.  I'm not saying that he usually does, but I can see why an actor would take a movie like this just for a paycheck.  He's really good here and his chemistry with Greenblatt is great.  Greenblatt plays Koa, the only survivor of the crash.  She doesn't speak english, so not only does Mills have to fight dinosaurs but he has to figure out how to communicate with her as well.  They have a great back-and-forth which really makes this movie good in my opinion.  Going in, I assumed Mills was going to be a stereotypical soldier character.  Luckily I was wrong.  He cracks jokes with Koa and genuinely cares for her.  It was a really nice change of pace.  Greenblatt also did a good job as Koa.  As I mentioned earlier, she doesn't speak english which opens up some unique avenues for acting.  Usually I'm iffy on kid actors, but Greenblatt sold me.  This movie also looks really nice.  In a world where everything is shot on a green-screen or in the Volume, it's cool to see a big sci-fi movie actually film on location.  The cinematography was gorgeous.  The dinosaur effects were also great too.  65 also does a great job with tension and there are several effective jump scares.  This makes sense because the directors (who also wrote the movie), wrote A Quiet Place.  It shows here.  There's one scene that involves a cave that had me bracing for something to pop out and it was really cool.  I also really dug the action as well.  In one sequence we see the fighting, but through the lens of a hologram projector.  It was a clever way to do the scene.  The technology in this movie was really interesting, too.  All of the gadgets Mills had were really cool.

As I said earlier, this movie has some flaws.  For one, I could tell a lot got chopped out and it shows in the movie.  There are some scenes  that are oddly put together.  I'll give an example.  In the beginning, when Mills first crashes, he's wandering around in a lake.  There's something in the water and the movie keeps reminding the audience by showing a mysterious fin going through the water.  The only problem is we never see the creature.  For me, I felt like the movie was building up to a big reveal of the creature but it doesn't happen.  Something similar happens a little later also.  There's something crashing through the trees and we see a little of it.  Koa is terrified and we're bracing for the reveal.  Mills grabs and pulls her out of the shot, cutting to a different scene.  It was a little jarring.  This kind of ties into the movie's length.  It's a little over an hour and half.  I think it would've benefited from being a little longer.  Some scenes needed more time to breath, particularly towards the end.  I was also hoping for a few more dinosaurs, too.  There are quite a few, but many of them are made up, which was a weird choice because, in this time period alone, there were hundreds of dinosaurs the filmmakers could've picked. This next part isn't really a positive or a negative, but it does have aspects of both.  Continuing with the dinosaurs, I'm a little mixed on them.  Part of me really dug some of the outlandish design, but the other dino-nerd part didn't care for them.  In a way, they reminded me a lot of the dinosaurs from the video game Turok.  They were more monster than dinosaurs.  Oddly enough, I get it.  This is a movie, not a documentary and it's meant to entertain.  Another part of 65 that bothered me was that there were no herbivores in it.  I think I read somewhere that there was a cut of this movie that had an ankylosaurus and a triceratops, but they were taken out of the movie because of test reactions.  In the finished movie, there is a scene that has a dinosaur that looks a little like an ankylosaur, but it's walking on its hind legs and has a raptor head.  The decision to cut the herbivores was a stupid choice in my opinion.  Carnivores weren't the only creatures that lived during this time and the directors had a chance to really show off this ecosystem.  Herbivores can be dangerous and it would've been cool to see this.   Again, this is me just being a nerd and it wasn't a huge negative, but it was something that bugged me.

65 is fun, quick journey into the past.  Adam Driver and Arianna Greenblatt did a great job as the leads, the movie looks great, there was some genuinely tense moments, and the action is cool.  Unfortunately, it feels like a lot was cut from the final version, the movie is a little too short, some of the dinosaur designs were a little weird, and I would've liked to have seen some herbivores.  With all of that being said, I still had a good time with the movie.  Like I said earlier, if this came out when I was 8, I would've loved it.  If I were to rate it, I'd give 65 a 7/10.  I recommend you go see it because we need more dinosaur movies!