Review: ‘Thunderbolts*’ bends, but doesn’t break, the superhero mold

Director Jake Schreier and an all-star cast deliver a brooding, thoughtful superhero film.

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You sense a significant change is going on within the Marvel Comics Universe from the opening moments of director Jake Schreier’s emotional and exciting blockbuster, a promising launch to the summer film season.

A sullen Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) stands near the edge of a skyscraper, contemplating her significance in the world and pondering if her life truly matters, given the deaths she’s been responsible for. It’s yet another instance of just how great an actor Pugh is, but it’s hardly your standard opening for an MCU film.

What follows is an introspective and daring character study focused on the janky psyches of the anti-heroes known as the Thunderbolts. It’s a welcome departure from superhero business as usual, as these emotionally brittle characters get a bit “Inside Out” with their emotions. (Don’t worry, diehard fans, all that emo still leaves room space for lots of action and some good old-school slugfests.)

Better yet, there’s a more judicious use of CGI here than in the past (the final sequence is a breathtaking jaw-dropper that ventures to very dark places). Yelena, played by Pugh with a keen awareness of the hollow inertia that fuels despair, wants to retire but agrees to perform one final assignment for a big backstabber with too much power, CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Allegra’s got her hands full and is staring down impeachment hearings, where she’s getting the side-eye from Congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now a namby-pamby politico who gives reporters nothing more than gobbledygook when asked a question.

Allegra also has a new uber-capable assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan) who learns not to trust her new boss. She shouldn’t. Yelena’s final task from Allegra turns into a deadly setup that ensnares other anti-heroes with her — the very, very temporary Captain America, hot-headed agent John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko). While trying to escape the fortress where they’ve been trapped, they stumble into shaggy-haired Bob (Lewis Pullman, in a terrific, often heartbreaking performance). Why is this dazed-and-confused guy there and why is this team targeted for death? Those questions lead this rogue’s gallery of characters — whose frequent disagreements supply much of film’s clever humor — to join up with an audience favorite, the bearish Red Guardian (David Harbour, chewing up the part like a pro).

“Thunderbolts*” doesn’t rush the action, but it does deliver the staples that superhero fans crave while respecting the need to create a bolder story than what the superhero genre has been delivering of late. By so doing, Schreier, screenwriters Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo and the entire cast have hit a home run — a superhero saga that gets under your skin and will makes you want to cheer and laugh. Better than all that, though, is how it so artfully depicts the biggest battles that confront us: the ones in our heads.

Need another reasons to see “Thunderbolts*”? How about that final end credit scene? Talk about a game changer.

Contact Randy Myers at soitsrandy@gmail.com.

‘THUNDERBOLTS*’

3½ stars out of 4

Rating: PG-13 (violence, language, thematic elements, sex and drug references)

Starring: Florence Push, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Director: Jake Schreier

Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

When & where: Opens May 2 in theaters

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