Thun­der­bolts* review – the best Mar­vel film in a while

Flo­rence Pugh has become the face of mil­len­ni­al angst, from the tear-induc­ing can­cer jour­ney of We Live in Time, to the ugly-cry­ing mur­der chaos of Mid­som­mar. No won­der she was cho­sen to lead a new team of (not-so) super­heroes as part of Marvel’s ​“Phase Four”. The world has gone through a pan­dem­ic, and this com­ic book uni­verse has had its fair share of cat­a­stro­phe, and Pugh is an actress of the cal­i­bre need­ed to han­dle the emo­tion­al com­plex­i­ty of all that fallout. 

Yele­na Belo­va (Pugh) is going through a depres­sive episode: Her boss (Julia Louis-Drey­fus) is mys­te­ri­ous and insane; Her work is unful­fill­ing; and she’s mourn­ing the death of her sis­ter. Left alone with noth­ing to do but assas­si­nate tar­gets and dwell on grief and remorse, she decides on a pos­i­tive ​“peo­ple-fac­ing” career change – to be a prop­er hero and make her life worth living. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly this is eas­i­er said than done, espe­cial­ly with wider gov­ern­ment con­spir­a­cies at play. And so Belo­va is thrown togeth­er with a rag-tag bunch of anti-heroes includ­ing three super­sol­diers liv­ing in the shad­ow of Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, and two sim­i­lar­ly adrift (yet tal­ent­ed) mur­der­ess­es from Ant-Man and Black Wid­ow. There are bril­liant ele­ments of com­e­dy – the name Bob is inher­ent­ly fun­ny, and this is utilised to the max, and Geral­dine Viswanathan, who plays a har­ried but effi­cient assis­tant to the Drey­fus’ head of the CIA, is a highlight. 

It’s as busy as it sounds, and though they are all giv­en screen-time and cool fight sequences com­plete with wince-induc­ing prop­er­ty dam­age, the oth­er hero­ines do unfor­tu­nate­ly fall by the way­side. The promis­ing Ghost (Han­nah John-Kamen) is rel­e­gat­ed to becom­ing a begrudg­ing British voice of rea­son with­out much devel­op­ment, while Taskmas­ter (Olga Kurylenko) is crim­i­nal­ly underused. 

The mar­ket­ing cam­paign for Thun­der­bolts* has been a fas­ci­nat­ing change of tack from the behe­moth stu­dio, espe­cial­ly this trail­er, point­ing out the A24 roles of the cast and crew, down to quot­ing the font and for­mat of the titles from Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ Kinds of Kind­ness trail­er, to empha­sise that the Thun­der­bolts* cre­ative team is dif­fer­ent, spe­cial, not like oth­er girls.

Plot-wise, like any indie film worth its salt, the real ene­my here is depres­sion. This is miles bet­ter sto­ry­telling than the pre­vi­ous Avengers films, but I fear that’s a low bar. Take Scar­lett Johansson’s Black Wid­ow, who shift­ed from the Whe­don red­head sex icon to being defined by her child­less­ness and her abil­i­ty to ​“fix” the Hulk, to the Rus­sos devel­op­ing killing her off and not giv­ing her a funer­al (while her cowork­er, Iron Man, got an emo­tion­al eulo­gy) in Endgame. This is the best Mar­vel film in a while, but it doesn’t quite com­pete in the big­ger leagues of the indie cin­e­ma it aspires to.

There are echoes of this emo­tion­al crutch ener­gy in Thun­der­bolts* as the film turns into a two-han­der between Pugh and final boss, Lewis Pull­man, but thanks to writ­ers from Netflix’s BoJack Horse­man, this is the first Mar­vel film to take men­tal ill­ness and its psy­cho­log­i­cal toll seri­ous­ly. It’s also about how liv­ing in a lone­ly vio­lent world can exac­er­bate those issues. 

There’s also some nice nerdy con­text too. As a girl, I always want­ed to know more about the Red Room where the Wid­ows were trained. From glimpses of bal­let in Age of Ultron, to a 1940s Wid­ow in Agent Carter, it’s always been a point of fas­ci­na­tion. But Yelena’s flash­backs show noth­ing but abuse, and the hor­ror of betray­ing her friends. There is noth­ing roman­ti­cised about being turned into a weapon. It’s a sober­ing and impres­sive approach, one that is almost too good for a film that can’t ful­ly tran­scend the MCU require­ments of wise-crack­ing and tying up loose plot ends. 

With mem­o­rable scenes of laugh-out-loud mis­fit fun and enter­tain­ing dia­logue – not to men­tion some visu­al­ly strik­ing stunts à la Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – there is a lot of super­fi­cial fun to be had watch­ing Thun­der­bolts*, which hasn’t been the case in the MCU for a long while. Aes­thet­i­cal­ly, the colour grad­ing car­ries for­ward that bizarrely dull MCU grey tinge, but at least in a film that is meant to be rough around the edges, it works. 

How­ev­er, a poten­tial­ly great film is down­grad­ed to good by its inabil­i­ty to escape the wider Mar­vel machine. It’s a film that doesn’t quite stand alone thanks to its reliance on recall­ing back sto­ries and in clum­si­ly set­ting up Phase Four, makes me won­der how sus­tain­able this sprawl­ing, unwieldy cin­e­mat­ic uni­verse is. The per­for­mances and dia­logue around trau­ma are sin­cere, but under­cut by a need for a neat end­ing and sequel setups. 

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