You’ve seen this story before, the notion of a disparate group of irredeemable characters who discover a modicum of redemption through heroic acts they themselves didn’t expect to commit. Yet, this is also just classic archetypical storytelling, because what separates Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” from many of these stories—James Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” being the most superficially similar, but totally different—is its characters’ genuine, perceptible feelings of shame, regret, and self-loathing.
Where Gunn’s movie used F-bomb-laden irreverence to Trojan Horse its emotional side within the gates of hyper violent spicy comedy —a motley crew of self-interested rejects who discover their benevolent side by standing up for the discarded and forgotten—“Thunderbolts*” mostly centers on a group of castoffs who are consumed with shame and have lost their sense of self-worth.
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Much of this manifests through Yelena Belova, aka the new Black Widow (an excellent Florence Pugh, and a wise writing decision to center the movie around her discernible talents). Carrying out hit-squad kill assignments for now, CIA Director Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), and still mourning the loss of her sister Natasha Romanoff while trying to navigate a world without her, Yelena’s inner spark has diminished. Drinking, depressed, taking Val’s assassination gigs to stay busy, she’s sleepwalking through life and going through the motions, but is deeply unhappy.
Struggling, she reaches out to her adoptive father, Alexei Shostakov, the Red Guardian (David Harbour), in a desperate move to connect with someone on a meaningful level. But before she can reforge a bond with her dad, Val calls with a new mission.
Craven, as always, Val’s been secretly overseeing clandestine experiments on humans trying to find the next generation of superheroes, but she needs to torch the evidence when Congress gets wind of it and tries to impeach her, and Yelena is the insurance.
When she arrives at the top-secret compound, however, a host of anti-heroes are also there, the disgraced John Walker/U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell), the assassin Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and the ruthless killer Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and it’s clear that part of Val’s duplicitous strategy was also to tie up loose ends and have all her mercenaries wiped out in one fell swoop.
There’s one problem with the backstabbing scheme: this group of throwaway outsiders is pretty resourceful, and then there’s also the amnesiac Bob (Lewis Pullman), a test-subject of the experiments that even Valentina and her assistant Mel (Geraldine Viswanathan) didn’t know had survived.
When Bob’s powers and full potential comes to fruition, all hell breaks loose, even beyond Val’s control, so it’s up to this band of rogue losers, led by Congressmen Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) to stop a terror that’s been unleashed.
Written by Marvel writer Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, the co-showrunner and writer of “The Bear,” the “Thunderbolts*” plot is pretty mid and unremarkable, but its story, about overcoming and moving past dishonor, remorse, and our darkest mistakes, is a meaningful one that’s soulfully told.
And the real villain isn’t Valentina’s nefarious plan, Sentry or Void, some other force, it’s uncertainty, self-defeat, and the negative self-talk that prevents us from moving forward beyond our pasts and the guilt, shame and disappointments that haunt us.
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Not the biggest studio film in recent memory, and perhaps better drama than a traditional superhero movie, nevertheless, Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*” is an entertaining, watchable tale of discarded, beautiful losers who meet their moment during a great public crisis.
While it may lack in massive epic action and set pieces, as a movie with real dramatic personal stakes about relatable human struggles and those who feel they’re not worthy of love or regard, it’s surprisingly moving and affecting too.
Moreover, “Thunderbolts*” does an admirable of never pretending what it’s not: there’s no tacked on bigger third act that doesn’t feel out of step with the rest of the modest picture and never appears as if it’s willing to take a safe or cheap route just for the sake of a fleeting wink that has no staying power or narrative value.
In this sense, “Thunderbolts*” feels like one of Marvel’s most honest and authentic films in recent years: it has a self of itself and its tone and doesn’t need to feel like it should be anything like an ‘Avengers’ film because it’s certainly not.
Directed by Jake Schier (“Beef”), “Thunderbolt*” is surprisingly poignant, as the film’s few, but crucial emotional moments far outweigh any of its fisticuffs. To that end, the film’s secret weapon is truly the talents of Florence Pugh, the cast, and their chemistry. The film’s most powerful scene is literally a tearful exchange between her and “daddy” Alexei. It’s just a dialogue scene between a daughter who has lost her inner spark and a father who knows her incandescent personal light has the capacity to illuminate so much good in the world, and it’s arguably just as formidable as anything Thanos ever wrought.
The cynical might say “Thunderbolts*” is just a stepping stone to tee-up its post-credit scene—arguably more influential on the Marvel Cinematic Universe than any one scene in the movie—and while this may be true to an extent, that’s not the point. “Thunderbolts*” may combine many incongruent outcasts from the MCU, but it’s a consequential story about them, as humans, as people, their traumas, their doubts, and not how they impact the world.
“Thunderbolts*” isn’t an MCU game-changer, by any stretch, but it’s not aspiring to be either. Is it a two-hour therapy session about self-compassion, being kind to ourselves, and giving ourselves a break from all the transgressions we have tortured ourselves about, wrapped up in a comic book movie? Maybe, but it’s got a big heart, a strong emotional point of view, a good sense of humor when needed, and has something touching to say about forgiving ourselves enough to transform our pain into something that can do good, and that feels like a small but meaningful victory to me. [B+]