Marvel is still struggling to regain their superhero glory. This story is the usual group of super humans who don't particularly like each. They team up to defeat the evil Valentina Allegra de Fontaine who is trying to create a super being by experimenting on a sensitive guy named Bob.
There's lots of fighting particularly in the first half of the film. It looks like Thunderbolts will be at the very least an entertaining action picture. But with about an hour left in the run time, the film gets all soft and mushy as the team gets a conscience and tries to stop Bob who is now a full fledged powerful evil villain. There's lots of hugging and talking about feelings in fact there is so much feel good stuff that after a while you wish people would start hitting each other again.
Really the only reason to watch this film is for the sly performance of Florence Plug as Yelena Belova who ends up being the leader of the new superhero group. Pugh basically blows away nearly everyone in the cast even the blowhard character Red Guardian played by a very hammy David Harbour. And who made the decision to cast one time Seinfeld cast member Julia Louis Dreyfuss as the evil Valentina? I'm sure she's a fine performer but those years of playing Elaine Benes have seriously typecast her. I expected to hear a laugh track whenever she spoke.
In the early Marvel films they were able to mix action with humor. Now it just seems like they can't get the mix right anymore. In fact I would argue they are rehashing story points from early and better Marvel films. Thunderbolts is mostly another sit in front of the TV with your computer and surf the internet movie. A step up from the stupid Thor Love and Thunder and the horrible Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania but really not much of a step up I'm afraid.
The film was written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, the running time is an overlong 127 minutes. They should have been able to knock this story out in 90 minutes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment