This “The 355” Stunt Video Packs a Mean Punch

“The fights are ruthless, and at the same time emotional,” says The 355 star Jessica Chastain in a brand new behind-the-scenes stunt featurette. “It makes it more brutal because you feel the weight behind each move.” The new featurette takes you behind the scenes of co-writer/director Simon Kinberg‘s long-delayed action flick, which arrives, at long last, in a few days. Klingberg has assembled an A-list cast to lead his original espionage thriller, with Chastain but one big name in the bunch.

The premise is simple and potent—a multi-national team from America, Germany, England, and Colombia must team up to take down some seriously sinister dudes and their top-secret new weapon. Your heroes are CIA agent Mason Brown (Chastain), German agent Marie (Diane Kruger), former MI6 agent and computer specialist Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o), and Colombian psychologist Graciela (Penelope Cruz). Their mission gets more complicated when a mysterious woman named Lin Mi Sheng (Fan Bingbing) jumps into the fray, raising the stakes considerably.

This new stunt featurette (the stunt and fight coordinator for the film is James O’Donnell) shows just how seriously the cast took the many, many hand-to-hand battles embedded in Kinberg and co-writer Theresa Rebeck’s globe-trotting thriller. Imagine a mashup of Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible led by an incredible cast of women.

The 355 is Kinberg’s second directorial effort after X-Men: Dark Phoenix. The film was originally slated for a January 15 2021 release, but, well, you know. But this featurette reveals that the wait might have been worth it. The film looks like a blast.

Check out the stunt featurette below. The 355 is set for release on January 7. 

Here’s the synopsis for The 355:

A dream team of formidable female stars come together in a hard-driving original approach to the globe-trotting espionage genre in The 355.

When a top-secret weapon falls into mercenary hands, wild card CIA agent Mason “Mace” Brown (Oscar®-nominated actress Jessica Chastain) will need to join forces with rival badass German agent Marie (Diane Kruger, In the Fade), former MI6 ally and cutting-edge computer specialist Khadijah (Oscar® winner Lupita Nyong’o), and skilled Colombian psychologist Graciela (Oscar® winner Penélope Cruz) on a lethal, breakneck mission to retrieve it, while also staying one-step ahead of a mysterious woman, Lin Mi Sheng (Bingbing Fan, X-Men: Days of Future Past), who is tracking their every move.

As the action rockets around the globe from the cafes of Paris to the markets of Morocco to the opulent auction houses of Shanghai, the quartet of women will forge a tenuous loyalty that could protect the world—or get them killed.

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Featured image: (from left) Graciela (Penélope Cruz), Mason “Mace” Brown (Jessica Chastain), Marie (Diane Kruger) and Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) in The 355, co-written and directed by Simon Kinberg. Photo Credit: Robert Viglasky/Universal Pictures

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The Credits is an online magazine that tells the story behind the story to celebrate our large and diverse creative community. Focusing on profiles of below-the-line filmmakers, The Credits celebrates the often uncelebrated individuals who are indispensable to the films and TV shows we love.