It takes a solid hour to get going, and pretty much as long to identify its characters. Good luck if you buy a ticket and show up without more background than you typically need to know for a comic book adaptation.
And it finishes with a pulled-punch, because it can’t bear to call a villain a villain and wants to make the point that sometimes we have to “work with” evil.
The jokes don’t really land, and for what it’s worth, if you’ve seen the trailers, you’ve heard the punchlines.
The stakes are low as “death” seems permanently impermanent in this corner of the Marvel Universe. At least Scarlett Johannson had the good sense to cash in, punch out and move on.
Here the Oscar-in-her-future leading lady is adequate at fight choreography — no more — and the supporting cast is mostly lesser lights who could stand a little character development and build-up so that they “grow” a little more charisma in our minds, at least, over the two hours and six minutes of Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*.”
But say this much for Marvel’s rebooting of its “Super Friends” segment of the comic book action fantasy marketplace. “Thunderbolts*” earn their asterisk.
This impromptu “team” meets as they’re each summoned to a fortified mountain “vault” to TCB for an embattled and corrupt CIA chief (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) who is trying to cover her pre-impeachment “human testing” and off-the-books “ops” from a dogged Congressman (Wendell Pierce), a feat which she might just manage thanks to her amoral/follow-orders aide (Geraldine Viswanathan, co-star of the best “COVID” comedy “Seven Days,” and “Blockers.” pretty bland here).
So Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), still mourning the death of her Black Widow sister (Scarlett Johansson), “dime store Captain America” John Walker (Wyatt Russell, son of Goldie and Kurt), and the vanishing superheroine/assassin we learn is named “Ghost” (Hannah John-Kamen) all show up to deal with an files-stealing interloper on orders from CIA chief Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Dreyfus).
They figure out the crooked appointee at CIA has lured them into a trap. But they can’t quite figure out who the hapless dude in the pajamas — “Bob” (Lewis Pullman) — is and why he’s here.
As they escape, aided eventually by Yelena’s Soviet super soldier Dad, Alexei (David Harbour), the Red Guardian who now drives an ancient Lincoln stretch limo, they’re pursued by The Winter Soldier himself, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), now a Congressman who figures he can throw in with them and bring down this corrupt spy boss in a post-Avengers universe.
Because the spy boss has a new “secret weapon.” Think “human testing” and “confused guy in his pajamas.”
It’s a cutesie “anti-hero” superhero riff that never really delivers, despite having a few fights — fewer than usual — and the requisite explosions (probably less than were contracted for). They throw in some existential angst, about loneliness and the generational disconnect that has many wondering “Why carry on?”
Heroes and villains ponder this.
One problem with “Thunderbolts*,” a moniker the various “super serum” superheroes cannot agree on (thus the asterisk), is the unfamiliarity of the characters and most of the actors playing them. Even people deep into Marvel have been sharing homework on this project online as it was cast and cobbled together.
Another serious shortcoming is the villain, whose pajamas hint at how he’s able to get into their dreams and heads, taking them back to ugly moments pretty much every character in this has experienced or instigated. He makes the leap to global menace in a flash.
“Everyone here has done bad things,” Yelena rationalizes. But that’s no reason to stop trying to do good.
Harbour tries to make Russian accents comical again, an uphill struggle. Russell takes a shot at making his biggest role memorably unpleasant. He’s Captain America as “an a—ole,” more than one character surmises.
Others are left with little to play, with Dreyfus particularly misused — teetering on comical, relying on that Cruella-streak of white in her hair to do the heavy lifting on her villainy. Other players lack the throw-weight to give the picture gravitas and its villains or heroes color beyond what’s on the scripted page.
It’s all something of a jumble, with even its “kumbaya “messaging muddled in a murk of competing story agendas.
As someone who’s not a fan of most of the Marvel movies that have come off the assembly line in recent years. I’ll admit to appreciating one cool “new” effect — human beings and superhuman beings turned into Hiroshima “shadows” in the wink of a “god” supervillain’s eye.
But with Pugh featuring in most of the close-ups in a film story that’s really going nowhere but “sequels,” one never shakes the feeling that an actress of her already-impressive stature should have taken Johansson’s lead and limited her commitment to this piffile to one, two or three lucrutive and perhaps limited appearances.
Giving her a kicky blonde dye-job and a shapeless jump suit and letting her throw punches that don’t impress anyone feels like a waste, as this not-jokey-enough superhero punchout is plainly beneath her even if she never lets on that she thinks that.
Rating: PG-13 for strong violence, profanity, thematic elements, some sexual and drug references.
Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hannah John-Kamen,
Geraldine Viswanathan, Lewis Pullman, Wendell Pierce, and David Harbour
Credits: Directed by Jake Schreier, scripted by Eric Pearson and Joanna Kalo, based on assorted Marvel comics and Marvel comic characters. A Marvel Studios release.
Running time: 2:06
Movie Nation 