The thing that “65” reaffirms is that not all past times were better, especially since the age of the dinosaurs was an impossible place for the human race. But this production by Sam Raimi bears sympathetic nods to the more classic and silly sci-fi cinema of the times of B-list “voyages to prehistoric planets” and other “Robinson Crusoe on Mars”-type cosmic adventures, with a bit of bad luck for Tony and Douglas. In Irwin Allen’s “The Time Tunnel” series, where if he didn’t take them to the Titanic before hitting the iceberg, he sent them into the jaws of a prehistoric dinosaur.
There are several twists and turns that make “65” such a great modern sci-fi movie, and one of them is the fact that the astronaut played by Adam Driver, who hails from a futuristic planet inhabited by humans, has nothing to do with it. Planet Earth where his ship was wrecked by a meteor shower that altered the course of his passenger ship. The future pilot discovers that there is only one other survivor, a human teenager but from a planet where only an incomprehensible language is spoken, and the translator, like many of the other tools on the ship, does not work, though it is enough to fight off the local vermin and rodents. Walk 12 kilometers to the rescue capsule.
A Quiet Place directors and screenwriters Scott Peck and Brian Woods take the saga of these two unique characters seriously — recordings and holograms of the protagonist’s estranged daughter, which adds a human factor — play out what would happen if a man highly evolved, and with some technological resources, to have lived on Earth for the 65 million years to which the title refers. There are dinosaurs and some hideous Velociraptor, as well as swamps with quicksand – a great sight worthy of some old superhero action movie – and if something was missing, a meteor caused the dinosaurs to become extinct.
The movie “65” is a wonderful sci-fi adventure movie with a family spirit, which is not to say that there are all kinds of bloody scenes, especially some with insects. But there is a nice aspect of the movie that works well is the relationship forged between these two cosmic outcasts, who are fighting for their lives even though they have lost everything. That’s why this is such a great movie that mixes near impossible things like prehistory and the future, but with human characters and emotional situations integrated with action, suspense, and monsters. The quality performances of Adam Driver and his protégé, Ariana Greenblatt, as well as the special effects, spaceship designs, and hostile prehistoric environment round out its merits.
