Thunderbolts*: an unusually thoughtful Marvel movie

Thunderbolts* (127 mins, 12A)

Directed by Jake Schreier; starring Florence Pugh, Lewis Pullman, Sebastian Stan

It may be overstating the case just a touch to say that Florence Pugh has saved Marvel. But it’s not so very far removed from the truth. In Thunderbolts*, a stripped-down, toned-up throwback to an earlier, leaner era of Marvel movies, Pugh reprises the role of assassin Yelena Belova, first seen in Black Widow (2021). An adopted sister (kind of; the details are knotty) of Scarlett Johansson’s character Natasha Romanoff, Yelena is a product of the “red room”, the same Russian murder skills hothousing facility that honed Natasha’s talents.

Yelena might not have a superpower but Pugh certainly does. Her It factor – that symbiotic balance between the magnetic pull of movie stardom and the ability to disappear into a role – has rarely been showcased more effectively. It’s a rare gift, the ability to manage the delicate tipping point between convincing character work and celebrity. Philip Seymour Hoffman had it; Meryl Streep has constructed an entire career from it. And Pugh makes it seem effortless.

Plus, there’s a jauntiness and a touch of mischief to her screen presence that means she’s just enormous fun to watch, comfortably holding her own against the showy stunts and pyrotechnic spectacles.

When we meet Yelena, she’s in the employ of a slippery, power-hungry politician, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (a terrific Julia Louis-Dreyfus). Her job involves making Valentina’s little problems go away, using guns, knives, plastic explosives and whatever else is to hand. Which is fine, until Yelena realises that she, along with Valentina’s other covert “employees”, have become a problem for her boss and her all-consuming ambitions.

A routine assassination gig turns out to be a deadly setup. Yelena must join forces with a motley crew of lone wolf operatives – Captain America reject John Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ava Starr, AKA Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), plus a random sad-sack stoner in pyjamas named Bob (Lewis Pullman) – to have any hope of survival.

Pugh is so impressive that you don’t at first notice how much else there is to admire in the film. Director Jake Schreier, best known for the quirky heist picture Robot & Frank and the TV series Beef, was perhaps not an obvious contender to don the Marvel mantle, but he proves to be an inspired choice.

His vision for the Marvel universe is darker, more grounded and gritty. His action sequences have a bruising immediacy. There’s a fight scene early on that, if it’s not a direct homage to the renowned single-shot corridor brawl sequence in Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, certainly captures a similarly breathless visceral punchiness.

While Pugh is a minxy standout, the performances are strong across the board. David Harbour, as Yelena’s adoptive dad, Alexei Shostakov (AKA Red Guardian), is a big, blustering burst of energy, attacking the role like a bear raiding a picnic basket. And Pullman, whose character is not all he initially seems, brings a relatable vulnerability to Bob’s magnified emotional polarities.

It helps that the cast are given plenty to work with, thanks to a sharp screenplay by Black Widow writer Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, a writer on Beef and showrunner on The Bear.

This is a script that isn’t afraid to show its smarts – not too many popcorn blockbusters reference Kierkegaard, after all – and balances snappy, pleasingly astringent dialogue against unexpectedly consequential themes. The antagonist to be defeated in this story is not some all-powerful, levitating space zealot. Instead, Yelena and her team must face off against isolation, self-doubt, depression and mental illness.

Even their most formidable foe has superhuman powers rooted in the vestiges of their human fallibility.

Another rewarding aspect of the film for audiences and, one suspects, actors alike is Schreier’s decision to favour practical “in-camera” effects where possible – real explosions, skyscraper plummets and somersaulting limousines.

This, together with the arthouse sensibility of cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (The Green Knight, A Ghost Story), results in a fertile visual terrain that has a texture and life to it, rather than the synthetic, barren ground of a predominantly CGI picture. Thunderbolts* might not venture into multiverses and extra-dimensional realms, but it’s worlds away from the soulless slog of much of Marvel’s recent output.