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At The Movies Weak superheroes make for strong entertainment
The Straits Times
|May 01, 2025
The latest Marvel Studios blockbuster is not only stacked with strong character actors, but is also emotionally rich
THUNDERBOLTS* (PG13) 126 minutes, opens on May 1 ★★★★
The story: A group of superheroes with spotty records and shady pasts — Yelena Belova/Black Widow (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) and John Walker/US Agent (Wyatt Russell) — reluctantly unite when faced with a threat posed by CIA director and industrialist Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).
The asterisk in the film's title points to its conditional or provisional nature. Its precise meaning will not be revealed here. Instead, have this takeaway: This is the most emotionally rich Marvel movie to come along in a long time.
A decent filmmaker can evoke tears with Tony Stark's death in Avengers: Endgame (2019). But it takes talent to wring pathos from a scene in which two lower-ranked Marvel characters talk about the ways they have been hurt.
This story is from the May 01, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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