Film Review: Thunderbolts*

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

The key to enjoying this movie is to understand what it is.  The Avengers were the A-list, best-of-the-best elite of the MCU.  But the Thunderbolts are the underdogs, the Bad News Bears, the Dirty Half-Dozen of the MCU.  DC tried to do this with both Suicide Squad movies.  But Thunderbolts is able to do it better.

The movie centers around Yelena (Florence Pugh), who is in a malaise as she continues to try and find purpose in her life by doing missions for Valentina (Julia-Louise Dreyfuss).  Her pseudo-father Alexi/Red Guardian (David Harbour) provides no real guidance.  So she agrees to one more mission, where she encounters John Walker/The US Agent (Wyatt Russell), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and the mysterious civilian Bob (Lewis Pullman).  I won't spoil the context in which they encounter each other, but together, along with Red Guardian and the Winter Soldier/Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), they get pulled into a mission to potentially save the world.

Does the movie match up to the pre-Endgame MCU?  No.

But for post-Endgame, it is very enjoyable.

Unlike the Avengers, these Thunderbolts all have messed-up pasts that they are trying to run away from.  There is a reason why they are not the A-Team of Marvel.  But the story leans into this and explores how broken people try to move forward and be good.  Some have labeled this movie depressing.  But it is simply looking at heroism from another perspective.  Steve Rogers was always quintessentially good.  Tony Stark wasn't proud of his past, but he never felt villainous.  Natasha Romanov had a bleak past, but we never saw it.  With these characters, we see how they messed up and so we intuitively understand their redemption arc.  This is also one of the things that makes this better than the Suicide Squad movies: we come into this movie with a history with most of these characters.  To be sure, some of that history is small (I remember very little about Ghost), but it is still something to build upon.  Another thing that this movie has over its DC counterpart is that these characters really are on a quest to become better people.

This theme is very potent.  As someone who works with young people, I've noted a growing sense of self-hatred over the years.  So many of them cannot get free from their mistakes in the past.  This movie speaks to that and shows a way forward.

One of the interesting things about this movie is that it treats the character of John Walker the same as in Falcon and the Winter Soldier with the same results.  What I mean is that he is constantly put down by the other heroes as a "jerk" (I cannot write the vulgar term they usually use for him).  And yet he is by far my favorite character in the movie.  I think the movie wants to make him the toxicly masculine butt of the joke, but I think he is the closest thing to a Han Solo character in the movie.  

The performances are very enjoyable and the group, for the most part, has really good chemistry.  Pugh has to ground the entire film as someone caught between apathy, guilt, and goodness.  You can see that she is constantly at war with her nurturing and violent natures.  Russell swaggers into every scene as Walker in a way that I always enjoy.  In his head, this is not a Thunderbolts movie, but a US Agent movie and it actually makes him pop on the screen better.  There is a wonderful moment of empathy and connection between him and Pugh that is only a few seconds and has no words.  But in that space, the characters seem to understand each other.  Harbour plays Alexi as broadly comedic, but that works for what the movie needs.  Stan plays Bucky with a world-weary reluctance as always.  

The real standout is Pullman.  He has to play someone who at times is as innocent as a child and then as dangerous Thanos.  His emotional swings are unpredictable and wild, but he manages to pull all of them off with sincerity and intensity.  In the space of a few seconds with the simpliest change in body language and facial expression, he can go from funny to terrifying.  I think that if any actor will benefit the most from this movie, it will be him.  The rest of the cast does decently.  Dreyfuss is funny and charismatic, but she lacks the deadly screen presence that Viola Davis had in Suicide Squad.  

The script by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo is decent by post-Endgame standards.  Everyone since the original Avengers has tried to capture Joss Whedon's voice, but no one has quite cracked the code.  There contrivances and plot-holes galore (e.g. Valentina talks about her evil plans in front of her limo driver), but they only become problematic if you stop enjoying the movie.  The advantage of having pre-stablished characters is that the movie can move right into the action.  But this means that to really enjoy the film you have to do your MCU homework.  But because of this, the film moves on and does a lot in its two-hour run time.

The writers want to focus more on the theme than the plot, which accounts for some of the weakness.   Some of the characters (especially Ghost) do not feel nearly as fleshed-out as they should be.   However, I thought that some of the things they explore thematically were very rich.  I was surprised how they explored the Jungian idea of the shadow self.  Jung said that this darker side of our personality should not so much suppressed in us, but instead it should be appropriately woven into our personality.  If we suppress it, we can make it stronger.  We see this happen visually in the film.  

As a Catholic, I love how the movie focuses heavily on redemption.  Each of the characters has a reason to give into despair.  But in finding this community, they are able to help each other.  I love the quote: "The Church is not a museum of saints, but a hospital for sinners."  In finding each other, they help heal the broken parts in them.  

Director Jake Schreier does a good job with the action set pieces and the quieter moments.  Knowing Pugh is actually jumping off the building at the beginning of the movie made it more thrilling.  The visual representation of the main antagonist is something I haven't quite seen in a movie and it was incredibly interesting.  I couldn't help getting the feeling that his budget kept getting slashed.  For example, there is a sequence where Yelena has a flashback on what is clearly a soundstage.  Schrieir wisely doesn't try to hide this fact, but instead uses the artificiality for a specific effect.  Sometimes this works very well and sometimes it doesn't quite work.  But he does a good job with what he has.

I know that many of you have not been fans of the post-Endgame MCU.  But this might be the best of those movies since Spider-Man: No Way Home.  Because as they say:

Every underdog must have his day.