I so hoped in a positive review, but it does have problems. It’s a good movie, in a way, but it has the same flaw as every other female action movie, that they want it to be exactly like a male action movie, and I’m sorry but it’s not really believable that Chastain can physically win against Sebastian Stan and other male agents. I watched the trailer too to see how it was advertised, and indeed it was full of her in hand-to-hand combat… with a gun she was believable because she’s a good actress, but hand-to-hand… was it really necessary to do it? I also didn’t like to see them in macho-mode, burying feminism under the big lie that it means doing a man’s job like a man. I’m talking about all that word-fighting with each other without reason, without understanding or listening to each other, and all that yelling and swearing that in movies is considered macho if a man does it and histerical if a woman does it… and of course of all that hand-fighting in an evening dress and running with heels… at least they were not stilettos, but still, heels… what is it with heels, in America they don’t think a woman can be a woman without heels or she’s so self-conscious about being short (she’s exactly like me) that she refuses to wear sensible shoes suitable for the situation? Because we’re also to believe that she can run after everyone in heels… come on, if you want to do an action movie than be serious about it, big shootings are not enough, you’ve got to take it seriously. If you look like Chastain then you’ve got to win your battles with cunning and resourcefullness, not with brute strength… and if you’re in a combat mission, you do not wear heels!
I mean, really, do female soldiers wear heels, just because they’re women, or do they wear boots because they’re not idiots?
Other than that, it’s a good movie with a serious plot, although people have the tendency of being shot and shot and never die, but it’s nothing compared to die hard. It stars Mace, Cia agent.
In Colombia, some agents thought they were about to bust on a drug dealing business, but instead they were selling a disc capable of hacking into anything in a moment; to prove how it works, they make a plane explode in the air in a second, and the guy who made it was so stupid to say out loud that he’s the only one capable of making it and there’s not a copy of it anywhere, so it’s no surprise really when the buyer shoots him dead. What the buyer didn’t expect was the agents/policemen that stormed inside, so he fled without getting the disc. Luis, one of the soldiers, took this disc and asked three millions to sell it… every Country wants it, of course, and the so-called good agencies say they want it to keep it safe and away from the bad guys… but still they want it themselves, no joined missions with anyone. Mace and her best friend and colleague Nick go to Paris to close the deal, but German agent Marie spoils their plans… Marie takes one bag and runs, Mace chases after her. Luis runs and Nick chases after him… Marie manages to escape - although I really don’t know how she got on a running train - but there’s the money in the bag she took, not the disc. In his hotel room, Luis gets a visit: Doctor Graciela Rivera is a therapist for soldiers, and she was sent to him to lure him out. Well, she wants to help him, but they’re ambushed, everyone wants that disc.
Marie has to insist with her superior Jonas to stay on the mission and not leaving it to others, because in movies people always care so much about what they do… but he seems to care about her, and agrees. Mace on the other hand seems to be under investigation because she lost both money and disc and Nick was killed… her boss says he identified his body… she takes a moment to compose herself and deal with the emotions, then wants to complete the mission, of course.
In London, she asks Khadijah’s help, she was MI6 but has a life now, a boyfriend, and didn’t want to go back to her old life until Mace explained what that disc could do. Khadijah immediately finds Marie’s identity so they know she’s an agent too. Marie Schmidt, a Bnd agent who works alone.
Graciela convinces Luis to do the right thing and turn himself in, or something like that, so he retrieves the bag with the disc and she walks with him, she plans to fly with him and stay with him, she believes in wanting to help him, but someone shoots Luis. There isn’t just our three agents after the disc, others too. Graciela is shocked, she stays with him yelling for help, and he gives her his phone where he put a tracker on the disc. The bad guys get the disc. Marie steals a badge from a French agent and takes custody of Graciela. She has to explain to Marie that she’s not an agent but a psychologist, and then Mace and Khadijah enter the room, and there’s a lot of shouting, with Marie and Mace pointing a gun at each other… Khadijah tries to make them reason and join forces because they have a common enemy and a common goal, here. I appreciate that Khadijah knows Graciela’s name and uses it in full, while I don’t like that Mace keeps calling her Gracie without even asking first.
Now Graciela tells them that Luis put a tracker on the disc and she has his phone, he also put her fingerprint in before dying, to open t, so they need her to go with them because she’s the only one who can open that phone. She wanted to go back home, but there’s the serious risk the bad guys would follow her there, so she agrees to go with them. To Marocco.
They follow a man, but he passes it to someone else before being killed. This new courier walks through the crowd and they steal it from him, pickpocket. They finally have it, and since Mace’s agents are closer, the others agree to call her agency to give them the disc. They go out to drink and talk, get to know each other a little, smiling, thinking that it’s finally over. It’s not a bad scene, but it feels forced, their stories are too long. When they see on tv that there have been planes exploding, terrorists attacks, they understand something’s wrong, Khadijah sees that the tracker has been deactivated and they go back to find Marks dead. Cia agents storm in to arrest them all, so they fight - without killing a single agent of course. Marie reports to Jonas but without saying where she is and closing the call before she can be traced.
We saw that it was a Chinese girl who got to Marks.
They go back to the courier, Marie shoots him in a leg and gets him to tell them that there will be an auction in two days, in Shanghai.
Whenever they can, Khadijah calls her boyfriend and Graciela her children. Mace asks what she told him and Khadijah tells her, then Mace says that it’s true love then and she says that it is real life… Mace says that James Bond never lived the real life, and Khadijah rightfully points out that James Bond always ends up alone… because that’s what men supposedly like to see, a man always on the hunt for the next woman, they supposedly like this glamorous image of the lone wolf, as if it was something cool, like they’re not smart enough to realize that a lone wolf is a sad wolf, not a cool one.
Khadijah the tech genius puts the four of them on the auction list so they enter from the front door; three in evening dress and Khadijah for some reason wears a business-like dark tailleur with trousers. Maybe because she gets in but she doesn’t mix with the crowd, she hides and uses her devices to find the disc.Of course the disc will be hidden in one of the objects for sale, it will have a secret auction on some people’s phones. Graciela talks with a man who flirts with her and finds out it’s inside a vase.
Mace meets Nick who approaches her. She’s very surprised to see him alive, and even more to hear that he’s not with their agency anymore. His speech about how many people their agency got killed would improve if he wasn’t now on the side of cold-bloodied killers. He wanted to see her again and asks her to join him, but of course she can’t. So he tells a guy to keep her locked in that room while he joins the auction for the disc, and Mace gets free by hand-fighting that man without even ruining her elegant dress…
So Nick joins the Chinese girl who seems to run the auction house inside a room with the vase. Marie causes an explosion with something Khadijah had with her, she did say she always carries disinfectant. The police are on their way, so Nick takes the disc without waiting for them to prove it works and escapes. Marie and Khadijah are blocked by a sea of armed men but the girl orders them to let them go, and even gives them a ride on her car.
Honestly, what was that scene at Nick’s car all about? Mace hugging him saying she’ll go to him and then pointing a gun at him, with all those people around… what was it about? Had he not threatened to have his men shoot the crowd, would she have shoot him right there? Bu how could she think he’d let himself be caught without a fight, since he has a lot of men with him?
The Chinese girl is Lin Mi Sheng and works for the Ministry. They had been monitoring the situation all along, and since the Cia failed in Paris, they had to get to the disc themselves. They also took the great opportunity presented to them to learn who would take part in the auction and get information. Of course they didn’t really sell the real disc, they have it right there, what Nick got is a fake.
Marks was obviously working with Nick, since he said he identified his body, and it was him who caused those terrorist attacks. They both worked for Elijah Clarke, the man we saw at the beginning of the movie.
Once again it seems like it’s all over, and they can finally go home…Lin tells Mace that it’s what they do, put their lives at risk to save other lives, that they look different, have different laguages, but after all they’re the same. It’s not over though, Nick and his men burst in and surround them, they can’t do anything now, and they can see on their monitors that Nick’s men have guns pointed at their loved ones: Jonas is the first killed because he esorted them to not tell him where the disc is, then Khadijah’s boyfriend is killed. Graciela cries and yells for her sons lives, so they yield and tell him where it is. He takes Lin with him, to be sure it’s the right one this time - because apparently she knows how to use it but he doesn’t. Graciela’s family is let go, and after they’re gone Marie wants to switch off the monitors that still show the dead, but now she sees inside Nick’s car, through Lin’s glasses. She put them on again before going with Nick, and now they know where to go to find her. Khadijah works to learn what she can and it’s even annoying that now Mace tells her to let it go and go home, she got angry when they wanted to take her off the case after Nick’s death, and what home does Khadijah have to return to? She wanted to get back to him, but now she’s only got her job to do. Marie finds Lin’s room of weapons.
Liin tries to take as much time as she can to start that disc, to give them time to arrive. When she can’t delay any more, she leaves her glasses behind near the computer.
They cause an explosion, they all fight, there’s a lot of shooting, then Mace fights Nick. Marie gets the disc and she’s shot. Graciela arrives in time to shoot Nick… because she may not be an agent but he almost killed her sons and husband, so yes, she shot him. When the police arrive to take everyone away, Khadijah gets the disc… and finally steps on it and destroys it! Good move.
We move to two months later, when we see that Nick got promoted to Marks job after killing Elijah to cover his tracks. When he gets home, Mace is inside waiting for him. They share a drink but she put a poison in the ice that he always uses and she never wants. He says it’s not surprising that he got promoted because basically the whole system is corrupt and cares only that he be useful, and he came back with Elijah dead and the disc destroyed, enough for them. Mace says that Agent 355 was the first American spy whose name nobody knew. The other girls are in the house too, and they reveal they put an old Chinese poison in his ice. Mace still says she’s not killing him, a team is arriving that will get him the other side of the world, locked up for the rest of his life. Because she’s not alone anymore.
When they go out, they say they have been cancelled from their agencies, because their agencies are corrupt, the whole world probably is. They say their goodbyes and go their separate ways.
Mace is Jessica Chastain
Marie is Diane Kruger
Graciela is Penelope Cruz
Khadijah is Lupita Nyong’o
Lin is Bingbing Fan
Nick is Sebastian Stan
Elijah is Jason Flemyng
Luis is Edgar Ramirez
ITA Secret team 355
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