The 355  ★★★

SPY thriller The 355 is a pleasant surprise.

This is one of those films completed more than a year ago but not released until early 2022, partly due to COVID but also because the studio wasn’t sure how to distribute it.

It has some good actresses in the primary roles and a decent director but there are no headline stars to drag the average punter in.

As a result it’s probably going to go un-noticed at the cinema but hopefully will find more love when it gets to streaming services.

Apparently the idea for the film came from its main star, Jessica Chastain, who pitched it to director Simon Kinberg while they were working on X-Men: Dark Phoenix in 2019.

Kinberg is best known to date for co-writing four of the X-Men films, but Chastain has played the action hero before in 2020’s Ava.

In The 355 she is joined by Penélope Cruz, Fan Bingbing from China, Germany’s Diane Kruger, and Lupita Nyong’o.

They play a group of women forced together to stop an attempt by rogue criminals to sell software that can cripple countries and kill thousands to the highest bidder.

The film’s premise is simple and the script pretty basic, but there is good pacing and genuine excitement generated in the chase and shootout sequences.

All the performances are good but Kruger’s character is the most complex and interesting.

The 355 isn’t anything startlingly original but what it does it does pretty well.