Thunderbolts* // Film Review

Thunderbolts* is probably the MCU'S most endearing ensemble since the Guardians Of The Galaxy, which granted isn't the highest of bars - Eternals did little for anyone, and the less said about The Marvels the better - but it is, as oddly advertised, something of a return to form for Marvel.

With a likeable cast, unusually solid action filmmaking and an endearing finale, this isn't the post-modern anti-superhero movie some were expecting (indeed, I saw one point suggesting it could be to comic books what Unforgiven was to Westerns), but it is a good time all the same, standing out as more than just Entry #36 in the Great Marvel Experiment.

To the surprise of no reasonable person, Florence Pugh is the front-and-centre movie star here, even when hampered with a dodgy Russian accent. Her Yelena Belova has become a shining star in the franchise almost by accident; debuting as the sidekick in a straight-to-streaming Black Widow movie, then cameoing in the Hawkeye TV Show, this big screen debut reaffirms Pugh as one of the few bankable movie stars still on Disney's payroll.

She is complemented, to her credit, by a game supporting cast. Sebastian Stan is mostly just here to smoulder and wipe that dishy little fringe out of his eyes - which is fine. The real scene-stealers however, are David Harbour and Lewis Pullman . Harbour gets all the best jokes, and the film's sweetest-then-most-shocking beat late in the story, while Pullman quickly builds a rapport with Pugh that becomes the heart of the piece. Given the nature of his character as an unstable, unpredictable Superman-type, the script does often need to contrive sequences to bind the characters together, but it is all the better for those cheats.

Thunderbolts* is a strange film, in that the script does feel like the product of one linear storyline rather the pre-vis, focus tested reshoot show we've come to expect from Marvel. Such an approach comes with its own warts, particularly in a clunky stretch of stake-raising towards the end of Act 2 - outside of Marvel, it's rare for a script to have to suddenly spike to apocalyptic scale ninety-minutes in - but the trade-off is far more time spent on character and conversation than you may be expecting. It helps that the climax leans towards the latter, culminating in a sequence about as bold and moving as this genre is capable of being, capped off with one properly great final laugh into the stings. 

This isn’t an “A24 Marvel Movie” as some marketing assets have keenly suggested, but it is probably the most pointed and playful of these things in at least a decade. Son Lux’s score is great, while Andrew Droz Palermo's cinematography finds fresh takes on old fight scenes, and the ultimately baddie is like no other in Marvel lore. It's not going to change the game, but once Sinners is out of the way, you could do a whole lot worse than Thunderbolts*.

*the asterisk still looks really dumb though