65 pairs the always enigmatic Adam Driver with a potentially balls to the walls concept to shockingly underwhelming returns - delivering a thoroughly dull affair that only occasionally lives up to its billing. No one is going to these types of movies for their inventive narrative or complexity in all fairness, but even then 65 shoots itself in the foot with how rushed the entire ordeal is. Given its sparse runtime at just over an hour, one would expect a quick and lean thrill ride but the result is quite the opposite. Aside from a need to interject some form of development in Driver’s struggle to cope with the loss of his young daughter - in itself a forced narrative plot point that rears its head occasionally but never has the impact the film clearly thinks it should - but in between the action sequences, the downtime moves at a snail’s pace making the movie feel much longer than it really is. The story of a man protecting a young child as they navigate an apocalyptic landscape isn’t anything new and since it’s a very surface level film, even that doesn’t work as well as it should despite the efforts from its cast.

That being said, Adam Driver reliably brings his game in the lead role - even though it’s arguably his weakest, no fault of his own - as this lone man grappling with his daughter’s loss and connecting with a new one and co-star Ariana Greenblatt is also solid as the deaf child he stumbles upon. Between them two, they mine some solid material despite the weak script they’re handled - what there is of a script since the film leans so heavily into the sign language side of things that it robs the film of some momentum in the most crucial of times. Scott Beck’s direction leaves quite a bit to be desired as well, as his film simply checks off the list of tired sci-fi tropes that have been done to death without even making that arena of 65 somewhat entertaining in itself, amounting to just being there.

Now does it have some fun moments? Quite clearly as Adam Driver does let loose on a bunch of angry dinosaurs rampaging on the planet before they’re all wiped away for all eternity - the special effects are eh - but in the end, they do little to offset this choppily edited product that unfortunately joins the long list of those hacked to pieces by studio mandate before they even had a chance to live. I’d much rather rewatch Jurassic World: Dominion.