Sometimes a movie comes along with a premise that feels almost too simple – but it's enough to absolutely hook you. When I first saw the trailer for 65, that's how it felt. Adam Driver shooting dinosaurs? Absolutely sign me up.
As it turns out, the movie's got a slightly more complicated backstory than that to explain, which shouldn't be a surprise – but I don't have long to watch it. 65 leaves Netflix in the US in just a few days, on 7 January, which means there's a countdown on if you also want to see it.
This is even more of a sci-fi movie than it first looks, with that title coming from its time setting, 65 million years ago. Driver plays a spacefarer from a distant planet who crash-lands on Earth in the long period when dinosaurs were the apex predators of basically every food chain.
When he finds another survivor, his mission becomes clear – get himself and that young girl to safety without becoming dinosaur chow, aided by at least a little of the advanced technology he's salvaged from his ship's wreckage. It doesn't look like it's all that sophisticated from there, but I' ma huge fan of Driver's edgy and unpredictable on-screen persona, so it's still a film I'd love to watch.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given its schlocky story setup, the movie didn't review terrifically well when it came out back in early 2023. It sits on a pretty offputting critics' score of 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, albeit with an audience score of 64% pushing back against that tide. That's not enough to change my mind, though – it's on my watchlist to get viewed before it leaves Netflix.
Movies leaving the platform can't be a surprise now, but it's still always a dent to any streamer's claim to be the best streaming service when a film you want to watch disappears from under you. So, good luck to Netflix in finding another movie where a major star shoots guns at dinosaurs – that's the bar I want it to clear, if at all possible, once I've watched 65.
