Late one night, in an office somewhere, a man stands gazing out his window towards the night sky. The phone rings. “Hello Scott. This is Hollywood calling. Listen, we have all these dinosaurs left over from Jurassic Park. We also have a pretty good space actor who needs to keep busy. We’re putting you and Bryan on the job. Make us proud.”
*Click.
“65” is an action packed science fiction dinosaur thriller written and Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods. We open on a nondescript planet in a galaxy not so far away, before the advent of humans on Earth. Adam Driver, starring as Mills, a space pilot, is on the beach telling his wife that if they want their daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman), to live, he must take the two year mission he was offered in order to afford the treatment she needs to survive.
Next thing we know, we’re on his ship as it collides with an undocumented asteroid field and ends up crash landing on an unknown planet…its Earth, 65 million years ago!
The plot is totally bare bones. Like, let’s just give the guy a gun and find some excuse to surround him with dinosaurs. It has a pretty weak script too. The only other survivor of the crash is a girl about his daughter’s age named, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who doesn’t speak the same language; and, because of a translator malfunction, they can’t understand each other. So yeah, 90% of the dialogue is just struggling with that.
Spoiler Alert!
The two battle dinosaurs and other difficulties left and right as they make their way thru jungles, caves, tar pits, geyser fields, and cliffs all the way to the top of a mountain where they’ve located an escape pod they can use to rendezvous with a rescue ship. If the stakes weren’t high enough, take note that all this is happening while the asteroid that long ago destroyed the dinosaurs is due for impact any moment!! Somebody call Bruce Willis!
After one final epic battle with two massive Tyrannosaurus rex and a vengeful theropod, they do manage to escape in the nick of time as the asteroid makes impact. Fire rains down from the heavens, and the credits roll!
All in all, “65” was a fun watch I guess, but a weak movie overall.
“65” is currently in theaters.
