Dir: Jake Schreier
Starring: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, David Harbour, Wyatt Russell, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia, Louis-Dreyfus, Olga Kurylenko, and Lewis Pullman
2h 6m
The “Thunderbolts*,” Marvel’s super team of fallen heroes, deadly assassins, and reformed villains, assembles to close Phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Director Jake Schreier utilizes every trick and trope in the comic book movie handbook to add something new and unique to the formulaic blend of recent superhero movie fare. While the story here continues to be unsurprisingly bland, the emphasis on character development, the chemistry between the ragtag team, and the introduction of a fascinating supervillain create an amusing, charming, and, at times, touching story of existence.
The characters in “Thunderbolts*” are all previous rogues and rebels to the Marvel superheroes. U.S. Agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is the ‘could-care-less’ antihero who once held the role of the new Captain America in “Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Ava Starr (Hannah John Kamen), the wall-phasing baddie also known as Ghost, was last seen in “Ant-Man and the Wasp”. Yelena Belova, the Red Room-trained assassin and sister of Black Widow, found purpose working with heroes in the television series “Hawkeye.” These contracted assassins have been working for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a power-hungry figure under investigation and intertwined in the business of superheroes, cleaning up the mess of a super-soldier program that went sideways. Yelena, Agent Walker, and Ghost are also part of that mess and become targets against each other.
Knowing that their efforts and skills are better suited together rather than separate, and adding Yelena’s father and limo-driver Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour) and Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), the former Avenger now traversing the political realm to fight evil, the group join forces to fight Valentina and her new weapon, Bob (Lewis Pullman), an all-powerful superhuman who struggles with negative feelings and memories of terrible events.
While the “Thunderbolts*” is a team-up, this film belongs to and is rightfully focused on the fantastic performance of Florence Pugh and the already well-established character of Yelena Belova. Pugh’s charm and emotion build a great foundation for the reintroduction of the other characters. Director Jake Schreier and screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo emphasize the characters and their interactions with one another, using them to expand the story and creating connective tissue between them that holds what little emotional stakes the tale tries to construct.
The story of betrayal and the play for power from Allegra de Fontaine are formulaic, nothing new in superhero cinema. However, the introduction of Bob, a failed experiment from the super soldier serum program, utilizes a few narrative and character devices that make the latter half of the film more interesting than it otherwise would have been. Bob, a young man with a history of depression and drug abuse, is pushed into the role of a superhero. The newfound power creates a dissection, turning the unstable Bob into a malevolent alter-ego called The Void. The metaphor created using this character, along with the character motivations of Yelena, adds a nuanced portrayal of mental health and the private struggles these heroes are dealing with. It’s a subtle touch that adds much-needed depth to the otherwise systematic narrative.
“Thunderbolts*” may not live up to the scale and spectacle of other Marvel superhero films, but that’s a good thing. The emphasis on character and the chemistry between the reluctant heroes, along with committed performances from Florence Pugh, Wyatt Russell, and David Harbour, anchors the film. The unexpected approach to critical commentary on mental health within the storytelling only further lifts director Jake Schreier’s “Thunderbolts*” above the recent, lackluster standard of Marvel movies.
Monte’s Rating
3.00 out of 5.00
