Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has a problem. Politicians – including congressman Bucky Barnes – are scrutinising her every move and she has a closet full of skeletons that she doesn’t want to see the light of day. What better way to clean house than have all her shady operatives kill each other and then bury the evidence. The problem is that de Fontaine’s operatives, for all their many faults and personality-disorders, don’t die easily and uncovering her plan leads them to work more as a team than simply a gang full of killers. But if they survive their initial encounter – where they all believe themselves to be the hero – how will the White Widow, John Walker, Ghost, Taskmaster decide what to with their new status?
Will the Winter Soldier and the Red Guardian help or will they simply complicate things further?
As the individuals face their own sins and darkness within, de Fontaine has a plan to both defeat them and elevate her status. But she may have overlooked one thing… what about ‘Bob’?
*spoilers*
In the scramble to maintain (or, more accurately, rediscover) its creative and market prominence, Marvel (and to some extent, the cinema-going public) have tended to forget that Avengers: Endgame may have been one of the most truly epic and satisfying action movies ever made in the modern era, but it was more so the reward and cap-stone on a decade of careful, strategic worlds-building. Recent Marvel efforts, most of them variations on a theme – different people in familiar costumes – have felt as if they were strutting out of the starting-gate as if they were heirs apparent that could ride on the shoulders of giants and get the same adulation. The reality, reflected in the ratings and box-office receipts, is that the studio and these new incarnations actually had the even heavier task of escaping the considerable shadow of the original heroes and simultaneously carving a brand new day. Much as though I’ve liked some of the efforts to varying degrees, has there really been another Robert Downey Jnr, another Chris Evans etc that immediately had the same screen charisma; has any tv show felt truly more than mere connective-tissue for big-screen cousins. (Okay, Daredevil, I’ll give you a pass).
Though many of the characters debuted earlier, the film is really a vehicle for Florence Pugh and her Yelena Belova, the White Widow and sister of the late-lamented Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson). It’s mainly through her eyes and her desire to find a direction and point to her life after so much tragedy that we see her journey. At first she’s just a one-woman wetworks for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, little more than an assassin for hire and vaguely hoping that in some way she’s on the side of the morally-fluid ‘good’ guys. It quickly becomes clear that her next assignment is less about fulfilling de Fontaine ‘s promise of public redemption and more about Fontaine clearing the decks of embarrassing, inconvenient operatives. Yelena, John Walker, Taskmaster and Ghost have all been sent to the same location so they can kill each other and any survivors can be all blowed up together. Of course, that fails to happen and dragging a confused prisoner ‘Bob’ from the facility, they’re quickly on the way to either dig deep and disappear or find Fontaine and make her pay (the options are varied). Joined, helped and hindered by Yelena’s father (David Harbour’s Red Guardian) and then congressman Bucky Barnes (aka Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier), the stage is essentially set for whether a bunch of sidekicks and benched ‘heroes’ can actually redeem themselves and overcome their faults to blend as an effective unit.
How do the rest of the cast measure up? Sebastian Stan’s Bucky/Winter Soldier is arguably the one with the richest history. Recent decisions to make him a congressman (as seen in Brave New World) simply don’t sit right and the scenes ‘on The Hill’ feel as awkward as they are meant to be. The character has earned his top-level status and is best in the thick of the action, though once the ‘adventure’ of the film is over, it doesn’t make a huge deal of sense to stick around, other than to keep an eye on everyone.Harbour chews the scenery as Alexei Shostakov’s Red Guardian, the bombastic Russian who will never be the national hero that he wants to emulate despite believing it, a status also true of Wyatt Russell’s John Walker who is good in a fight but doesn’t have the heart of his hero, Steve Rogers. However Harbour and Russell both bring gusto to proceedings as characters whose reach is at odds with their grasp but not their ability to step up when it matters. Hannah John-Kamen’s Ava Starr probably had better character-development in the second Ant-Man movie and here is little more than the snarky tech-phaser that’s useful for getting out of locked rooms. Olga Kurylenko’s Antonia Dreykov (Taskmaster) and the ability to emulate anyone else’s fighting-style would seem rich with possibility, but – * further spoiler alert * – she has about two minutes of screen-time before being killed off. If it’s an early statement that the odds are against our anti-heroes, it also seems like a waste.
Those familiar with Marvel‘s ‘Sentry’ character may have mixed feelings about the representation here with Lewis Pullman as Robert Reynolds (replacing The Walking Dead‘s Steven Yeun who dropped out after delays. The character in the comics debuted to great acclaim in2000 dealing with the ying/yang of a troubled person imbued with a massive power-set. (In the comics the mystery of why there was a ‘unknown’ Marvel hero of such import was revealed to be the fact that Reynolds had a schism which meant that every time he used his powers, an equivalent ‘darker’ side to his personality was also empowered and the only way to save the world from this ‘Void’ was to have Robert and the entire world forget he ever existed). But thereafter Marvel really didn’t know what to do with a character that had Superman levels of power without either cutting him down to size or killing him off – neither of which really worked despite repeated variations on the theme. Here, the principle is the same, simply without the ‘legacy’ aspects of Bob’s origin. It makes an interesting dilemma with our heroes having to work together to take down an ‘enemy’ without hurting the ‘innocent’ Bob in the process. The climax provides a victory but it really doesn’t solve the fundamental problem and there’s a solid argument that the MCU may have just as much trouble using and defining the existence of the character.
Definitely enjoying herself, Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ de Fontaine, a self-serving character that often feels like Tulsi Gabbard trying to cosplay Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. She’s a fistful of putdowns and dubious decisions but if she seems a little a pantomime villain then one only needs to look at the real world to shrug and suggest she’s underplaying it.
Perhaps one of the great unanswered questions throughout the film is one that has pragmatically existed in other MCU films…. the idea that a threat is so big but that no other Marvel heroes turn up to help. We’ve established that in the wake of Endgame that some of the Avengers went their own way – Iron Man is dead, Captain America went back in time etc etc… but the firm belief that ‘none of the Avengers are turning up!’ seems conveniently definitive and leaves our erstwhile team to stand alone against a situation that would likely involve ‘all hands on deck’ from at least some of the characters Marvel has recently been promoting.
Thunderbolts* is a solid action movie, that gives us plenty of banter, fist-fights and emotional angst, one that varies between not taking itself too seriously and yet addressing some actual, real (and somewhat literal) darkness. It would be over-kill to say that this is an arthouse deep-dive into the perils of depression and mental health, but it does make some important acknowledgements about self-care, PTSD, the need for a support system and the dangers of power (enforced, lack of, governmentally and individually) and might well appeal to those who have experienced trauma in real life. But like The Simpsons meets Suicide Squad, it’s also deliberately celebrating the self-aware ‘B-Team’ aspect of heroes who lack the sheen and shine of Marvel‘s premiere teams and revels in that, so the result is less a champagne reception and more a crate of beer: Dark Avengers–Lite, so to speak. There’s a few too many characters and one suspects a few scenes left on the cutting-room floor. If the MCU has, indeed, been adrift – and recent features have often seemed like the studio throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks or making each project a merely a tease for something else – then Thunderbolts* is something of another course-correction, albeit one that feels like a more assured powerhouse preamble and statement of intent, reorganising ahead of this year’s Fantastic Four and the return of the Avengers (in some way, shape or form) for the Russo Brothers next two-part epic.
It’s a film that bounces along nicely and more pleasingly than recent efforts, noi more no less, but still seems to have a problematic ending/epilogue, one largely over-shadowed by an important post-credit scene with bigger implications. What role the Thunderbolts* (or rather their new monikered legal-wrangling name) play in that future – either as major players or a side-attraction – remains to be seen…
- Story8
- Acting9
- Direction8
- Pruduction Design / VFX8
