Thunderbolts and Lightning, Mental Health is Frightening*

Thunderbolts* takes a bunch of relatively minor MCU characters and scoops them up into a "Suicide Squad" type adventure where they face off against insurmountable odds. Given most of the characters have appeared in TV shows, there is a distinct whiff of Disney+ about proceedings but it is also one of the most solid films Marvel has put out in years. The execs must have known they had something decent on their hands as they waited until a whole weekend after release to spoil the end twist with marketing, as appose to doing it in the trailers.

The titular Thunderbolts are : New Black Widow, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), failed Captain America replacement John Walker (Wyatt Russell), former Winter Soldier turned congressman Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Russian super soldier and Yelena's adoptive father Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ant Man 2 alumni Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and maybe mysterious newcomer Bob (Lewis Pullman). If you follow MCU events you will recognise most of them from past projects (mainly 2021's Black Widow) but no need to worry if you don't, there is some clunky exposition dialogue to catch you up on everyone's story. Events take place over a night and day as Yelena, Walker and Ghost (along with Taskmaster, another Black Widow legacy) are individually sent by sketchy CIA director Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to clean up an off the books warehouse that is tied to a congressional hearing. After a brief tussle they realise they themselves are considered loose ends to be disposed of and end up on a collision course with Valentina's super hero experiment "Sentry".

So the characters aren't exactly household names but the film turns that to its advantage. Without a ton of baggage, Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo's script is able to mould the characters to fit the story. Harbour is funny as the over enthusiastic father figure, Russell is both smug and fragile and Stan is the cool uncle everybody wants to be. Ghost is probably least well served as the outsider looking for somewhere to belong while Yelana is the closest thing to a main character. If you are going to pick someone to hang your movie on, Florence Pugh is a solid shout and it's good to see her take centre stage after her underwhelming appearance in the Hawkeye TV show.

The round pegs in round wholes philosophy extends to the production, with Jake Schreier turning out to be a smart choice for directing duty. He may only have two films under his belt but he has done plenty of TV and the ability to come on board an existing property and get the job done pays dividends. With a background in music videos he clearly has an eye for style and the film looks great, marrying a grounded, fairly real looking aesthetic with a nice colour palette. We also get a cool looking superhero fight and the final big bad is visualised in a unique and thematically sinister way.

The story isn't anything spectacular and Red Guardian could drive an armoured limo through the plot holes, but having everything play out consecutively over a short space of time gives it a nice pace and sense of urgency. For a lot of the runtime it plays out like a child friendly(ish) version of Amazon show "The Boys", before ending on a finale that is basically a visual representation of battling depression. The MCU is often full of snarky and grandstanding main characters so it's a refreshing change to see the day being won by being nice. That said, depending on how you look at it, there are some uncharitable take aways regarding people with mental health issues not being fit for positions of responsibility or power. I'm sure any such message is unintentional and in a movie where a serum can dish out godlike powers, everything should be taken with a pinch of salt, but if you want to touch on such serious subject matter you really need to consider all angles.

Marvel say this is there first film release under the new "quality over quantity" policy and it shows. It's ironic that the title is Thunderbolts* as it's the first MCU film in while that can be called good without needing to add an asterisk.

7 sponsored Wheaties boxes out of 10.

Comments

Trouble in Paradise

Thanks to Evil Dead and Spider-Man, Sam Raimi will forever be associated with horror and superhero movies, but he has actually dipped his toe in many genres, from Westerns to sports movies. Send Help appears to be his twisted take on a rom-com. A good looking guy and an also good looking but awkward woman are stuck getting to know each other in a tropical paradise in a classic romance setup. In a slight break from tradition, proceedings are garnished with buckets of blood and puke and served with a side of black slapstick and maiming. Said couple is Rachel McAdams as super competent, but socially inept business strategist Linda, and Dylan O'Brien as Bradley, Linda's douchebag boss who passes her over for promotion as soon as he inherits daddy's company. When the private jet they are travelling in goes down they find themselves the only survivors as they await rescue from a remote island. Similarly to 2022's Triangle of Sadness, the power dynamics are completely shifted ...

Gimme Shelter

The start of another year means it's time for the annual "Jason Statham is a retired killing machine trying to live a quiet life but being forced to start stacking obituaries" movie. The typically nondescript title of this year's offering is Shelter and Stath's former special forces badass is called Michael Mason. When the British government agency that he used to drop bodies for comes calling at his remote Scottish lighthouse he is forced to take action, something that is complicated by the presence of a young orphan girl named Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). While our protagonist and his reluctant charge tear across the countryside, Naomi Ackie (criminally underused here) and Bill Nighy (putting in just enough effort to get by) scheme against each other at Spy HQ. Jason Statham movies can essentially be judged on three criteria; Does he get to do cool action? Are the bad guys formidable enough? Is the plot and dialogue entertainingly cheesy rather than just e...

Blow My Whistle

Whistle is Corin Hardy's third movie, after his 2015 breakout The Hallow and 2018's Conjuring spin-off The Nun. This new horror flick sits halfway between the indie energy of his maiden effort and the box ticking boredom of his big studio follow-up, with self seriousness butting up against dumb fun. The set-up is most reminiscent of Final Destination, with added high school slasher vibes. Chrys (Dafne Keen) moves in with her cousin Rel's (Sky Yang) family following the death of her father. Within about ten minutes of attending her high school she becomes besotted with Sophie Nellisse's Ellie, ends up in detention after a confrontation with loudmouth basketball player Dean (Jhaleil Swaby) and finds an Aztec death whistle in her new locker. Naturally, the teens end up blowing the death whistle which causes them all to be stalked by their future deaths. This manifests as a ghostly apparition of your dead future self who causes you to suffer said death as soon as they to...

Stars and Their Cars

Crime 101 is named for the California freeway one of the characters commits all his robberies along. It also doubles as describing his MO, he is successful because he makes sure he gets the fundamentals right every time. It can also describe the film itself, which nails the basics of making a slick crime thriller better than just about any other movie has in quite some time. The professional thief is Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth), a meticulous planner whose jobs never lead to anyone being hurt and are so well executed that nobody even has any idea they are all the work of one man. Nobody that is, except for Mark Ruffalo's Detective Lou Lubesnick, who is determined to catch the "101 Robber" even though his obsession is starting to lead to him being ostracised in the precinct. Both characters come into contact with high value insurance broker Sharon (Halle Berry) as Mike plans a big score and Lou joins the dots in an attempt to track him down. A potential fly in the ointmen...

Please Close This Book

The Strangers-Chapter 3 brings an end to one of the most puzzlingly pointless trilogies of all time. Shot back to back (although this instalment underwent some sizeable reshoots after the tepid reception to Chapter 1), the three entries encompass scarcely enough content to cover a single film and are devoid of scares or ideas. In fairness, this instalment seems like it almost has the genesis of something to say. Almost. If you were lucky enough to miss the previous instalments it won't take long to get you caught up. In Chapter 1, Maya (Madelaine Petsch) ran around in the woods a bit with her boyfriend before he was killed by some mask wearing locals of the backwater town they were visiting. In Chapter 2, she ran around in the woods on her own a bit before managing to kill one her face hiding pursuers. Here, we pick up straight after Chapter 2 and, after a brief interlude in a church, Maya is capture by lead "Stranger" Gregory. Meanwhile, Maya's sister Debbie and ...

More Money More Killing

How to Make a Killing is loosely based on 1949 British crime comedy Kind Hearts and Cornets (which is in turn an adaptation of 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal). In a world of remakes, reboots and adaptations, that is pretty interesting source material and could almost qualify as an original idea. Unfortunately, the imagination mostly stops there and the film isn't funny or insightful enough to rise above "it's fine" territory. Glenn Powell is Becket Redfellow, a suit salesman who grew up largely in the foster care system as his mother died while he was young. He is heir to the fortune of his mother's estranged family and, in the unlikely event all the other senior Redfellows should perish, he would be a billionaire. A chance encounter with his status obsessed childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) and an unjust demotion at work give him the notion to speed up his inheritance a little. As he arranges "accidents" for his fellow R...

It Sure Does

Love Hurts is Ke Huy Quan's first ever lead role. After decades out the game and struggling to keep his insurance prior to his Oscar winning turn in "Everything Everywhere, All At Once", you can hardly blame him for taking the chance to front a movie. Unfortunately, in Jonathan Eusabio's directorial debut, he has landed in a misfire. Quan plays Marvin Gable, a cheery real estate agent living his best life as he crushes the sales game and keeps everyone in the office (except for his depressed assistant) happy with his home baking. Unbeknownst to his colleagues he used to be a gangland hitman for his mob boss brother "Knuckles" and when the mysterious Rose, who Marvin was supposed to have killed, remerges, big brother dispatches the goons to get some answers from him. Cue high jinks as Marvin battles henchmen kung fu style while trying to keep his current and past lives from colliding. It's a fun idea but nothing quite comes together in the execution. Th...

Hourglass Half Empty

The video game, Until Dawn is essentially an attempt to make the player feel like they are controlling a horror film. Wisely, this is not a direct adaptation of said game, as that would simply be a bland reflection of a reflection. Instead, writer Gary Dauberman and director David F.Sandberg flip the idea on its head, making a film that uses video game mechanics (the characters respawn after death, with a finite amount of lives) to tell its story. An interesting premise, and given both writer and director have done sterling work in the genre , hopes were high. Sadly, this is an underbaked effort that doesn't come any where near the best work either has done before. Clover's is on a road trip with friends (including her clearly still into her ex-boyfriend). She is looking for her missing sister while her companions are hoping to help her move on. They soon end up at an isolated house that is miraculously untouched by the raging storm they are driving through. Come nightfall, a ...

Super Money Brothers

The minute an Illumination Super Mario movie was announced you knew what was on the cards and this is is exactly that, a mostly by the numbers crowd pleaser with a focus on easy laughs and merchandising opportunities. The good news is it's about as good a version of that as we were ever going to get. The story begins with Mario and Luigi (Mario Mario and Luigi Mario to give them there full names) trying to boost their fledgling plumbing business by helping out with a massive flood in downtown Brooklyn. This leads to them being sucked into the Mushroom Kingdom, via a green pipe naturally. The film is full of trappings from the game, with power ups, karts and a Princess obsessed Bowser as the antagonist. It does flip things round with Luigi being the damsel (da man sel?) in distress while Peach is fearless leader, probably a necessary change for 2023 . Other Mario staples like Toad and Shy Guys make an appearance and there is a trip to visit "The King of the Kongs" (Ninten...

Lungbuster

With Iron Lung, YouTuber Markiplier, real name Mark Fischbach, becomes the latest content creator to dip his toe into the world of feature film production. His effort is not as accomplished as the work of the Philippou Brothers (creators of Talk to Me and Bring Her Back) but it's a lot more striking and original than last year's Shelby Oaks (directed by YouTube film critic Chris Stuckmann). The film is based on a relatively niche video game of the same name, which was made by solo developer David Szymanski (who helped with the film's screenplay) and is set inside a submarine exploring an ocean of blood. We follow exactly the same premise here as our protagonist, a convict named Simon, spends the entire runtime welded into a decrepit submersible on a distant moon trying to earn his freedom. What his superiors are specifically looking for is unclear but he is told the blood ocean holds resources vital to the survival of mankind, who has been pushed to the brink of extinctio...

Dan Says its Alright

Search This Blog