Movie review: Thunderbolts

News of the release of yet another Marvel movie may not strike you as all that exciting. If so, I understand where you are coming from.

Marvel movies do seem to be very frequent additions to our cinemas but while they are not all in the “must see” category Thunderbolts* is one of the better ones.

It is well made, rolls along with a good pace, is funny in parts (sometimes with quite black humour) and features an excellent cast. It includes Florence Pugh (Yelena Belova aka Black Widow) and David Harbour (from Stranger Things) as her father (Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian), Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes aka Winter Soldier), Wyatt Russell (John Walker aka US Agent), Lewis Pullman (Bob Reynolds aka Sentry and The Void) and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (the very evil Valentina Allegra de Fontaine).

The talents of this cast are front and centre in this movie and they are not dwarfed by the extravagancy of visual gimmickry which is so much a feature of the genre. That is not to say that amazing special effects are absent.

If there is one dominant theme to this movie it is an exploration of mental health issues.

With this focus, the movie makers are venturing into the epidemic of serious levels of mental distress and suicidal ideation afflicting young people across the Western world. Indeed, young Australians are now the demographic with the highest level of distress.  So it is an important and contemporary issue.

The movie begins with Yelena Belova experiencing a severe dose of boredom and lack of fulfilment with her day job (she is a hired assassin). While Yelena seems unperturbed by the maiming and killing she deftly administers, she feels a lack of purpose and direction.

She is also estranged from her father Alexei, who has not regained his own sense of purpose and meaning following his retirement from his erstwhile role as the Soviet Union’s favourite super hero, Red Guardian.

While my experience of retirement has been quite different, I have heard of some retirees experiencing this sort of aimlessness and then coming out of retirement. This is what the Red Guardian does here. However, it is not so much redonning his fancy costume, as it is reconciling with his daughter that brings Alexei out of his funk. This reconciliation—along with developing a new group of friends—also ultimately restores Yelena’s sense of purpose.

Bob Reynolds’ first appearance in the movie is as an amnesiac who is also experiencing severe mental health issues. It transpires that as a result of medical experimentation, Bob has been given superhuman powers which later emerge as the Sentry.

Being told that he is stronger than The Avengers (of whom one member was the Norse God of Thunder, Thor) the Sentry concludes that must also be “a God.” Believing himself to be a God he observes “Why would a God take orders from anyone at all?” Of course, Bob is not “a God” any more than any “god” of the Greek or Norse pantheons were God.

He is not the Way, the Truth or the Life. He is not the Word and he is not the all-knowing and loving God. Mental health re-emerges as the films theme as Bob descends into depression and meaninglessness which given his super-power he directs on the world with destructive consequences as the Void.

Like Yelena and her father, ultimately Bob is saved by finding purpose and meaning in his life although through friendship rather than a reconciliation with family members. I recognise that it would be too much to expect such a movie to direct viewers to ultimate meaning in the One True God.

But while in the real world there is no substitute for finding meaning in the ultimate Truth, family, friendship and selfless heroism are all strong messages for any film. This is particularly so for a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster likely to attract many young viewers. It is worth watching.