Sixty-five million years ago, prehistoric Earth had a visitor.  On a reconnaissance mission for Planet Somaris, Mills’ (Adam Driver) ship is struck by a rouge asteroid, forcing him to crash land on the nearby planet; Earth.  Besides Mills, there were no survivors, and after sending his final message and aborting the mission with the control team back home, he prepares to end his life when his computer picks up a signal from a nearby cryo-pod.  He rescues Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), a young girl who was aboard the ship, and with newfound purpose, the two begin their trek up a dangerous mountain to rebuild an escape pod and return home to Somaris. 

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the writing team behind A Quiet Place (2018), mount their first directorial effort with 65, a broad-stroke sci-fi that mixes elements of space travel and dinosaurs in an easily digestible 93-minute package.  From Sony Pictures, it is the exact kind of schedule-filling titles that fuel a healthy box office.  Coupled with Driver’s attachment, the film opened on over 3,000 screens, but with only $12.3 million domestic to show for itself, it is not setting the industry on fire and still points to a troubling future for smaller, original titles performing well in cinemas.   

Driver leads the film, a much quieter sci-fi endeavor than his turn in the most recent Star Wars trilogy, yet a noisier film than many of the indie dramas to which he is drawn. Despite the blockbuster DNA, he still brings the same careful energy to his performance as Mills as he does in Jim Jarmusch’s Patterson (2016) or Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story (2019). The weight he gives to his performance lends credence to the wild concept and allows audiences to trust that Driver will lead them to some interesting narrative territory, even as the film begins to open up it appears this will be a single-hander. 

Ultimately, that is not the case, as with the introduction of Koa, Miles now has a reason to live and strive to return home. Their relationship is fraught with difficulties as Koa is from a different region of Somaris so the two do not share a language. It is certainly a choice that Beck and Woods committed to in the realization of this story, and while Greenblatt does well in the alien language role requiring a very physical and more universally emotion-driven performance, it is hard to say that it is the best use of the film’s runtime. Many of the interactions between the two are translation scenes that have been seen time and time again, but they only go one way, that is Mills instructing Koa. Overall, it works, and it allows for some interactions and a clear sense of trust to form between the two survivors, but one can not help but to wonder if the story would have been more effective had they shared a language because it feels very barebone. 

As for the story, though, it would also be hard to delve too much deeper into the concept given the limited number of characters available. There is no one to fill the professor role or the doctor, it all falls onto Driver to provide, not unlike Matt Damon as Mark Watney in Ridley Scott’s The Martian (2015) which found the astronaut similarly stranded on a planet far from home, forcing him to be resourceful with what he had left. That both Damon and Driver had to provide the wits and wisdom in their films is about where the similarities end between the two, as Driver’s Mills has crash landed on prehistoric Earth when dinosaurs still roamed instead of being stranded on Mars. 65 does not give any indication that Mills is aware of what these creatures are other than that they are vicious and out to kill him. He is not intent on studying them or learning about them in any way, rather, he just views them all as a threat and while the simplicity of the narrative works well, it does leave audiences wanting a little more. Further, Beck and Woods shake off any indication that concepts of time travel, interplanetary travel, igniting the spark of evolution, or any number of other sci-fi topics ever crossed their mind when writing the script as it almost goes out of its way not to mention these elements that are still left bubbling just under the surface. On one hand, it is commendable how committed the team was to telling this version of this story and not overcomplicating things, but like Mills’ ship, they went too far in one direction and are now faced with disaster. 

As for the action, and there is quite a bit since they opted for pulp and punch over plot, it is all well captured by Salvatore Totino’s camera as even when the film is at its darkest, we are never fully blind safe for a few key moments in which the total darkness makes narrative sense and is used strategically to build tension within the scene. The film boasts a handful of dinosaur foes, and though Koa does show signs of compassion towards some of them, by and large, they are seen as enemies to be evaded, if not destroyed. If there is a faulting point, it is that the narrative allows Mills all the tech to always keep a leg up – a gun that has rechargeable ammo that is also highly effective against the dinosaurs, a tracking device computer that has multiple programs to always keep him aware of his surroundings, and a portable forcefield system to name a few. 65 does not rely too excessively on technology, thankfully, but it is always revealing new capabilities and seldom causes any issues that set Mills and Koa behind stripping the film of any true feelings of danger. 

For what it is, 65 is a fun, compact adventure that dispatches its twist early on in favor of being able to focus on the mission home. It is a smart choice, avoiding the Twilight Zone ending, instead, it tells audiences upfront what they can expect and it delivers; Adam Driver, fighting dinosaurs, with lasers. It is the exact kind of easy viewing, popcorn sales vehicle that has been missing from the box office since even pre-pandemic times thanks to the bloated budgets required to keep up with Marvel’s latest recycled product, that it almost feels out of place on the big screen. Sure, it might be entirely forgettable since it is not trying to make any big statements, but it is good, old-fashioned, simple fun that still mages to tell an endearing story about two travelers just trying to get home.