As the sturdy oak of the Avengers has been logged for all its worth, literally being referenced with a museum piece in this latest Marvel film (government villain Valentina Allegra de Fontaine has leased the Avengers’ flagship building and mounted the aging iconic neon “A” on the wall like taxidermy), Thunderbolts* comes across as a very-conscious launch of a new crime-fighting team of heroes to replace Iron Man, The Hulk, et al. Even this new, unwilling rag-tag group of mercenaries, assassins, and a “dime-store Captain America” know it. The question is, will the audiences want to invest time with them, in what will inevitably become a new branch of the never-ending Marvel Universe?
We meet most of the major players when they are all sent by aforementioned embattled CIA Director La Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, resembling the current Trump administration’s Tulsi Gabbard in more ways than one) to kill each other, thus covering up La Fontaine’s secret agenda. There’s troubled Yelena (Florence Pugh), trained as a child mercenary in Russia, and still mourning the death of her sister, Black Widow; there’s John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the cranky, resentful dime-store Captain America; Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), some sort of badass killer with a neat mask that lets her walk through walls; and someone else who gets offed immediately.
What they discover is that the lair where they’ve been sent to kill each other is housing a top secret (and assumed failed) super-soldier experiment. As soon as they realize that La Fontaine plans to get rid of them if they don’t do it to each other first, they reluctantly team up, grabbing a strange and confused young man named Bob (Louis Pullman) on the way out of the exploding compound. It quickly becomes apparent that La Fontaine and her crew are very interested in Bob as well, so they all become targets.
Joining the core is Bucky Barnes aka Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and Yelena’s aging Russian superhero Alexi, aka The Red Guardian (David Harbour). For me, I realized I was along for the Thunderbolts* ride during a car chase scene in the desert, where Winter Soldier has a great moment where he shows up, Tom-Cruise-style, on a speeding motorcycle to save the others. Cars flipping head over heels in scenes like this have become so rote for action movies, that I was surprised how thrilling it was. I leaned over to my friend and said, “OK. That was hot.”
The action in Thunderbolts* feels more tangibly physical (and less, say, swooping through the air CGI-style and shooting lightning bolts) making it more involving. The movie is actually funny, in no small part to David Harbour obviously having a blast. But it also helps to feature Florence Pugh front-and-center. Marvel tends to grab Oscar nominees (probably handing them suitcases full of cash in the process), but getting someone who can act the hell out of minimal material can certainly make a film better than it should be. She again offers her comic chops that she displayed so well when she stole Black Widow right from under Scarlett Johansson. But she and especially sweet, troubled Bob (which may be a true breakout role for Pullman) give Thunderbolts* a surprising emotional heft as the story shows us that the most effective and devastating villain may be our own internal demons.
Anyone who reads my reviews of Marvel films can probably sense that, especially lately, I go into them feeling almost hostile at their never-ending dominance in pop culture. But I actually enjoyed Thunderbolts*. Even though it feels very reboot-y, it remembers that these films work best when the characters are memorable, the jokes are actually funny, and there is emotional investment in the finale. Will this crew be worthy of their own never-ending universe of stories? That remains to be seen. But it’s not a bad start.
