Film review: ‘THUNDERBOLTS’, by Nick Gardener from ‘Built For Speed’

Cinemagoers might have thought the Marvel movie onslaught had diminished, well guess what, it’s back! There’s the big-ticket Avengers Doomsday on the horizon and smaller films (by Marvel standards) popping up like Captain America: Brave New World and the latest offering, the oddly paced, uneven but intriguingly introspective Thunderbolts.

Thunderbolts is a sequel of sorts to 2021’s disappointing Black Widow which saw the last appearance of Scarlett Johansson’s character Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow who as we already knew at that point had died in Avengers: Endgame.  All those time jumps within the movies and across the franchise can be confusing but Thunderbolts is set roughly in the present day after the events of Endgame.  With the Avengers now gone, various forces are scrambling to assert themselves as America’s protector.  Leading them is the Cruella de Ville meets Bond villain CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis Dreyfus). Her MO is to use the remaining heroes, most notably Natasha’s sister Jelena (Florence Pugh) as contract assassins.  When it becomes apparent that the nefarious Valentina has concocted a new and seemingly unstoppable super hero/villain name Sentry, Jelena assembles a scrappy band of B-team heroes, including her raucous dad Alexei aka Red Guardian (David Harbour), Bucky Barnes (Sebastien Stan), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) and newly appointed Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) to thwart her megalomaniacal scheme.

There’s the usual CGI-drenched action and violence with most of New York being pulverised into dust, all interspersed with self-deprecating humour. Some of the action is thrilling and there are moments of tension and real jeopardy but it’s nothing we haven’t seen before.  The attempts at quirky comedy are erratic but the gags hit the mark just often enough.

The surprising aspect of this film, at least for those not familiar with the comic on which its based, is the exploration of the characters’ psychology.  The film, in its limited way, is largely about the battle with depression as characters confront their disenchantment with life and tragic events that have scarred them.  At one point, characters are thrust into a kind of Jungian shadow world where they walk around events from their lives like ghosts.  As they tumble through doors and walls into different past life scenarios, the film at times resembles the dreamscape of Inception or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.  The film is careful not to become to conceptual, though, and director Jake Schreier (Robot and Frank) quickly reasserts the punching and shooting.

Pugh was the standout and near-saviour of Black Widow and again she gives a strong and committed performance here, infusing Jelena with at least some degree of emotional depth while handling the physical scenes with aplomb.  David Harbour carries most of the film’s comedy and as the loud blustering Alexei his oddball observations are pretty funny.  Lewis Pullman, who plays the mysterious Bob, is quite affecting as a young guy battling with the demons of his past.

The film often feels like a cut-price Avengers and it even tries with limited success to make joke out of this. While the plot just seems to be setting up further films in the franchise, Thunderbolts offers just enough thrills and laughs to satiate most Marvel fans and delivers something a little more thoughtful than those who dismiss the MCU as fast-food cinema might have suspected.

Nick’s rating: ***

Genre: Drama/ Action/ Adventure/ Superheroes.

Classification: PG.

Director(s): Jake Schreier.

Release date: 1st May 2025.

Running time: 126 mins.

Reviewer: Nick Gardener can be heard on “Built For Speed” every Friday night from 8-10pm on 88.3 Southern FM.

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