Director: Jake Schreier
Writers: Eric Pearson, Joanna Calo, Kurt Busiek
Stars: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Julia Louis-Dreyfun
Synopsis: After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts.
Here’s the deal regarding Marvel closing out its latest phase: they’ve finally remembered the fun of their earlier entries. Along with the devilishly entertaining Deadpool & Wolverine, Thunderbolts* is the most downright entertaining MCU experience since the first Guardians of the Galaxy. A dirty (almost) half dozen that revitalizes the “bad guys doing good” trope, it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but still packs a big, beating heart that’s surprisingly poignant.
Thunderbolts*, like Guardians of the Galaxy over ten years prior, revitalizes the Marvel Cinematic Universe—but with a more grounded, darker, grittier approach that explores these beloved characters’ moral gray areas with unapologetically exhilarating results, real stakes, and something to say on the matter.
The story mainly centers around Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who is grappling with an existential crisis of her own. The former assassin is still doing cleanup work—painting houses, if you will—for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who is on trial for her life, facing impeachment for her callous attempts to create super soldiers with little regard for human life. The only thing keeping Yelena going is the job, as she ruminates on thoughts of her family, including her deceased sister (Scarlett Johansson) and nonexistent relationship with her father, Alexei Shostakov (Stranger Things’s David Harbour), aka The Red Guardian, a former supersoldier himself.
Yelena needs a change, wanting to shed the “anti” in antihero by doing genuine superhero good. However, like a cop going out on one last call before retirement, Fontaine asks Belova to do one more job for her, promising it will set her free. The director tasks her with locating and erasing any evidence of her past deeds that could be used against her at the impeachment trial. What Yelena underestimates is just how cunning Valentina is: she sends Yelena into a trap, luring all her assassins to a hidden compound—a birds’ nest—where they’re ordered to kill each other, because they are the evidence.
Yelena runs into a few familiar faces (and a couple of others I couldn’t pick out of a lineup). These include John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the disgraced stand-in for Captain America, who we last saw in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier killing Nico. You also have Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and the Winter Soldier himself, Bucky (Sebastian Stan), who shows up looking for evidence to take down Fontaine and bring her reign of terror to an end. However, they soon realize it’s a trap, with the director sending a team after them, only for a mysterious figure named Bob (Lewis Pullman, not reprising his Top Gun: Maverick role) to help the team escape.
At the core of Thunderbolts* is a deeply felt story of redemption. Sure, the film delves into your classic comic book movie clichés in the third act, but it is, after all, entertainment. The premise tackles the seriousness of mental health, resilience, and reinvention with thoughtful care. Director Jake Schreier (Paper Towns), working with a script from Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) and Joanna Calo (The Bear, Beef), doesn’t reinvent the wheel here, but he gives Marvel a darker take than any recent MCU film—a version that may make Christopher Nolan proud of its aesthetic. It finally lets go of colorful cosmic antics in favor of some rebellious and ominous irreverence that Kevin Feige has obsessed with for decades.
While many have commented that the humor is hit or miss, for this critic, most hits—especially with Harbour, who has a direct line to my funny bone. Like he did in Black Widow, Harbour fills this action-packed entry with comic relief. And we can’t stress enough how good Pugh is here: she takes what could have been a one-note, fairly paper-thin character and rounds out the performance with tremendous heart that’s genuinely moving. Meanwhile, Dreyfus revels in the role, perfectly embodying why a bureaucrat with unlimited power is the most dangerous villain. She’s so evil, it’s practically… polarizingly great.
It’s not hard to love Thunderbolts* since it had some bad press coming into the season, and not to mention, the terrible result of Captain America: Brave New World. However, the best superhero movies push boundaries, have murky moral complexities, and feature teamwork, which this new entry does nicely. The final result feels fresh because it is seen through a mental health lens that gives the films some added cinematic weight, and a touch of CGI that doesn’t feel overwrought to the point of cinematic subterfuge. It’s an excellent standalone entry that opens intriguing possibilities for a new phase.
You can watch Marvel’s Thunderbolts* only in theaters May 2nd!
