Man of Steel

“What is dra­ma but life with the dull bits cut out?” quipped Alfred Hitch­cock to François Truf­faut. Decades lat­er, Man of Steel direc­tor Zack Sny­der, screen­writer David S Goy­er and pro­duc­er Christo­pher Nolan appear to have tak­en him all too literally.

Crash­ing Kal-El back into our atmos­phere sev­en years after Super­man Returns, Man of Steel is a curi­ous polar oppo­site to Bryan Singer’s big-screen fable. For bet­ter or worse depend­ing on who you lis­ten to, that film was roman­tic, nos­tal­gic, wit­ty, sen­si­tive, short on action and big on char­ac­ter. But right from its apoc­a­lyp­tic sci-fi open­ing, Man of Steel max­es itself out on relent­less hyperbole.

Min­utes after home-birthing his scream­ing baby boy – Kal-El is Krypton’s first nat­ur­al birth in cen­turies, as we’re told on more than one occa­sion by Goyer’s slight­ly repet­i­tive script – Jor-El (Rus­sell Crowe) leaps atop a mon­strous drag­on­fly that might have escaped from Pan­do­ra, sup­press­es a vio­lent coup by Gen­er­al Zod (Michael Shan­non), steals a mys­ti­cal skull and blasts his son into space just before Kryp­ton is con­sumed by fire.

Pause for breath? Not a chance. We leap for­ward: adult Kal is now a fish­er­man on Earth, beard­ed, bare-chest­ed and on fire, launch­ing into action to res­cue the crew of a blaz­ing oil rig. Just as sud­den­ly, we leap back­wards: child Kal is freak­ing out in class as his super­sens­es kick in. And again: there’s teenage Kal res­cu­ing a school­bus full of his class­mates from drown­ing in a river…

As Hans Zimmer’s mag­nif­i­cent but overused score insists on high dra­ma, Snyder’s urgent styl­is­tics – all lens flares and tight close-ups – just can’t sus­tain this bold ellip­ti­cal sto­ry­telling. Nev­er ful­ly set­tling, Man of Steel just keeps bounc­ing from big scene to big scene. What’s miss­ing is the strong con­nec­tive tis­sue in-between them – the film doesn’t earn its big moments and this high­light-reel cin­e­ma leaves lit­tle room for char­ac­ter development.

Strain­ing in the oppo­site direc­tion are a pow­er­ful cast, doing their best to lev­el out Man of Steel’s forced grav­i­tas. In the midst of a tor­na­do set-piece, Kevin Cost­ner shows how a qui­et beat can car­ry 10 times more pow­er than the biggest explo­sion. Look­ing like he put Jason Statham in a blender and drank him, the phys­i­cal­ly epic Hen­ry Cav­ill also under­plays his role nice­ly, shad­ing Supes with a lone­li­ness and naïvety that adds fur­ther force to the venge­ful pomp of Michael Shannon’s charis­mat­ic villain.

Shame, then, that many of Man of Steel’s great moments – Kal paus­ing to feel the sun’s warmth on his face, the cute inter­ro­ga­tion-room ban­ter – are too short to savour. Singer and Joss Whe­don both showed how to dis­guise a com­pelling char­ac­ter dra­ma as a super­hero action­er. But in a film where dia­logue feels writ­ten in large print, most­ly book­ends for the action, there’s no patience here to build true romance between Kal and Lois (Amy Adams).

“You can save her, Kal,” says Crowe. ​“You can save them all.” And with that, Cav­ill pulls his best Space Jesus pose and freefalls from the heav­ens into a spec­tac­u­lar rush of noise and dev­as­ta­tion that bulks out the last third of the film.

Planes, trains and auto­mo­biles are flung around like toys in explo­sive close-quar­ter car­nage as Supes dukes it out with Zod’s war­riors in a series of cityscape smash-ups that scat­ter sky­scrap­ers like Jen­ga tow­ers, with Trans­form­ers: Dark of the Moon cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Amir Mokri again favour­ing chaos over chore­og­ra­phy. It’s a rush, but not quite the right kind. Much ear­li­er, a bar brawl that nev­er hap­pens tells us more about Kal-El than any fight scene. That Man of Steel ends on a per­fect note – a sub­tle, shared moment between two reporters at The Dai­ly Plan­et – just reminds you what bits are missing.