Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

Cast: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King, Brian Dare.

Laudable, proof on intent, utilising the very best aspects of humanity placed in a terrible situation where the audience understands the race against time and Armageddon, and yet 65, despite the dinosaur and meteor CGI, finds itself in the realm of the big feature film excess that falls unfortunately under the weight of expectation.

To damn a film straight from the off without the safety net of pushing the decency of the acting, to which Adam Driver does combat the limitations of carrying the film alongside his fellow actor Ariana Greenblatt for 98 percent of the runtime with a grace that few could have reached with such intensity of empathy, is to perhaps punish the picture before the dust has settled that makes the words feel reflective…but they cannot be argued with, for 65 could have been, and should have been more than it is.

The premise is short, and that in itself is perhaps a virtue, there is no requirement for the upset of the situation to be extended out as the grief is carried forward throughout the action, the way that the lost pair of Mills and Koa bond eventually through their torment and fear is enough to understand just how the hurt must be when you haven’t been there to say goodbye to a child.

Emotionally there is little to fault in the film, and yet the intensity is reserved fully for that reaction, for that element of loss, and everything else seems to require the belief of the viewer to explain how life that is so very human can exist without having come from Earth, and whilst the explanation perhaps is self-explanatory, it does the film or script no favours by its failure to address the question, and by which then leaves the plot line hanging.

A film which promises much but ultimately falls upon its own grandeur, a pity, but one that still deserves a one-time visit by a movie lover just to satisfy a curiosity. Not earth-shattering, but key to understanding of a bond forged after loss.

Ian D. Hall