Thunderbolts* Review
A darker than normal fare from Marvel, anchored by some wonderful actors and visuals, but also once again succumbing to the structural barriers of films like this.
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is at the bottom of a deep pit of government secrets on the verge of being exposed. Her mission is to murder another black ops asset, Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), but then Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko) shows up, as does disgraced former Captain America John Walker (Wyatt Russell), and mysterious stranger Bob (Lewis Pullman). Turns out, they’ve been betrayed by intelligence director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is cleaning up evidence of her power abuses before Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) and Congress can impeach her. The group of assassins escape the basement, but not without Valentina taking Bob and doing something terrible to him. Forced to reckon with an unstoppable, seemingly unbeatable power in the hands of a corrupt official, the remaining members of the group - joined by Bucky and Yelena’s Dad, Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) - team up to save the day.
Thunderbolts* is, by no means, a bad film. It’s actually quite an enjoyable and entertaining one - Florence Pugh is wonderful, the cinematography is great and some of the action is really palpably accessible and thrilling.
The movie also admirably plays with a deeper undercurrent of mental health. The character Bob - who is embodied by Lewis Pullman - plays with a bipolar personality that physically manifests itself as a threat to humanity more broadly, but those mental health aspects also extend to Florence Pugh’s Yelena. The whole complex is dealt with quite well, and while at times it is done so in a quite obvious way, it also feels respectful.
The main issue with the film is that there is so much build up, for such little pay off, that it can at times feel quite hollow. The movie does a LOT of work in the first three or more quarters of the picture, to set up the coming together of the team and the emotional backstories of these characters, often in quite striking ways. This works really well, but as the film gets to its climax and the newly assembled group has to go up in a big fight against the big bad, it all comes to a victorious head very quickly - perhaps too quickly. That’s the function unfortunately of this sort of film, where a resolution is required quickly by the end and needs to be delivered off the back of characters who have been well fleshed out, but one wishes this movie had the bravery and hutzpah to hold that threat over a little longer; perhaps to the next film, or perhaps by bringing that threat in earlier with a slight shuffle of the structure.
Overall, though, Thunderbolts* feels like a step in the right direction for the franchise. It’s not gaudy, colourful, OTT with humour and whippy dialogue; it takes the time to flesh its characters out, and has the balls to go dark and interrogate something a little closer to home. There’s something great about that, and while the structure still hampers real variety, it’s nevertheless a refreshing and entertaining time in the cinema.
