By Seth Lukas Hynes
Thunderbolts
Starring Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Lewis Pullman
M
4/5
Effectively the Suicide Squad of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thunderbolts follows Yelena (Florence Pugh), an elite assassin, who joins a band of antiheroes against their power-hungry boss as a godlike new threat emerges.
The ensemble cast has fantastic chemistry as bickering misfits who look out for each other.
Pugh anchors the film as a killer with a good heart, David Harbour provides levity and paternal pathos as her adoptive father Alexei, aka Soviet supersoldier Red Guardian, and Bob (Lewis Pullman), a gentle, unassuming man with a dark past and devastating powers, has a deeply moving arc about dealing with depression.
Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) have less to do in the plot but are still engaging characters.
The fight scenes are thrilling and easy to follow, blending the characters’ diverse styles, and unlike Captain America: Brave New World, in which Falcon has no superpowers and battles fighter jets and Red Hulk with barely a scratch to show for it, Thunderbolts’ action balances superpowers with substantial tension and vulnerability.
Thunderbolts also feels cohesive and moves at a steady pace, whereas the disjointed Brave New World reeks of reshoots.
Thunderbolts plays with unsettling dream imagery at several points, and the main villain’s design is chillingly effective in its simplicity.
As for flaws, Thunderbolts unceremoniously dumps a major character early on, the impeachment hearings against corrupt CIA director Allegra de Fontaine (a delightfully devious Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) dip in and out of relevance, and the ending feels abrupt and too clean.
An exciting and often touching character-driven superhero movie and one of the best MCU films in quite some time, Thunderbolts is playing in most Victorian cinemas.
