Thunderbolts*

Marvel’s latest concoction sees a team of perfectly cast rogues, all of them at least vaguely familiar from supporting roles in prior movies and TV shows, taking on an impossible mission during which they can run, jump, punch, shoot, kick, stab and perhaps find their inner heroes along the way.

Because we haven’t seen some of them for a while, everyone’s origin and primary flaw is smuggled into the script by sub-Joss Whedon snarky dialogue that raises the requisite titters. But it also has some real impact, thanks to genuine lackadaisical chemistry between the loners populating this makeshift super-team, and to a nebbish called Bob whose identity will be mysterious to all but the ‘true believers’.

As much colour has been drained from the cinematographer’s palette as he can get away with, isolating light sources from each other just as the ‘heroes’ (including metal-armed Sebastian Stan, blokeish Wyatt Russell and Russian dad David Harbour) have been isolated by the consequences of their backstories. But as they start to work together, brighter daylight shines down as if blessing them along their redemption arcs.

The fruit of the actors’ (and the stunt doubles’) hundreds of gym hours grows in fight scenes shot with handheld messiness and judiciously cut into long takes that leap and bound through every enclosed space. It makes a nice change from the usual pattern of explosions and running, at least during the personality-establishing opening act set in a high-tech escape room.

The basic plot follows that of 2012’s The Avengers before taking a surprising third-act detour into Michel Gondry territory as the denouement interrogates superhero cinema’s might-is-right dogma with the aim of doing something psychologically and visually interesting with it.

When she’s not upending goons twice her size, Florence Pugh’s lugubrious Black Widow carries on her deceptively narrow shoulders not only the whole roster of half-forgotten supporting players who litter the gigantic fissure Marvel has carved through 21st-century Hollywood, but also their collective sense of grief, pain and self-loathing which is the emotional fuel for the story.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a morally acrobatic Nick Fury in heels, a political animal who reserves the right to bare her teeth in warning to her enemies or in an ingratiating smile to her friends, depending on which will get her mission accomplished. She takes her background in comedy and action-paints it with some effective shades of menace.

Lately the MCU has been a tough habit to break, as one shiveringly clings to the hope that each new release will recapture the magic of the pre-Endgame era, only to be rewarded with an ever-decreasing high. The melancholic mood of Thunderbolts* (don’t worry, the asterisk makes glorious sense at the end) tempers the blockbuster bombast with a focus on characterisation and motivation that lets us see beneath the glossy surface.

This was always the secret to Marvel’s success, back when they revelled in that desirable balance of fan service, critical approval and box-office dominance and, perhaps ironically given its title, this instalment whispers it into our ears again, just loudly enough.

-Stew Mott-