Thunderbolts ★★★½

THE 36th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the best offering for a while.

Like all its predecessors, Thunderbolts is loud, brash and full of big computer-driven action sequences.

But, unlike recent MCU output, Thunderbolts has characters with heart and an emotional weight to its themes and narrative.

It also gives us a new team and villain along with nuggets of other information that have clearer relevance to the overall universe, both past and future.

So why the difference?

I think it comes down to a combination of the choice of director and balance of screenwriters for this film and the Studio creatives getting closer to understanding how they will tackle the next tranche of story and films.

Director Jake Schreier and one of the writers, Joanna Calo, are newbies to the Marvel stable and bring fresh perspective and depth to the characters. Co-writer Eric Pearson is already part of the creative team but appears to have guided the others in useful ways to expand the characters and story.

Then again, maybe they just did what Marvel told them was required of this film?

I think it was the latter. For example, Marvel has ventured into supernatural themes and darker sides of the multi-verse before, most notably via Doctor Strange, but never in as dramatic and emotional a manner as that explored in Thunderbolts.

Combine that with three strong leading performances from Florence Pugh, David Harbour and Lewis Pullman and you have a successful outcome.

Pugh reprises her role as Yelena Belova, the wayward Russian assassin introduced in 2021’s Black Widow.

The film begins in spectacular fashion with Belova stepping off a high-rise building in Malaysia (a stunt performed by Pugh herself) and abseiling into another building where she fights multiple guards before destroying a laboratory on behalf of CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus having a ball again) who is trying to conceal her involvement with a secret project that has gone off the rails.

A further desperate attempt by de Fontaine to erase all trace of her involvement backfires when Belova and others realise they too are expendable.

Into this mix comes a seemingly ordinary guy called Bob (Pullman) and Belova’s father-figure, the red self-proclaimed ‘Red Guardian’ Alexei Shostakov, again played with gusto by Harbour.

Schreier manages to balance all the elements – political intrigue, dark themes dealing with depression and loneliness, action sequences and regular humorous asides – in a manner that maintains audience investment in characters and story throughout the running time.

Watched at the cinema.