Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The Low-Down: Statistically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has achieved a great deal: over 11 years and 21 films, it has introduced dozens of relatively obscure characters into mainstream pop culture. More importantly, however, the franchise has proven that long-form storytelling can work in a cinematic context – as long as you balance plot with heart and humour, prizing character development over spectacle. That’s no small feat, and it’s even more remarkable that a movie with the gargantuan scale and ambition of Avengers: Endgame doesn’t fall apart beneath the weight of an unwieldy script or great expectations. In fact, this is the MCU’s crowning achievement: a heartfelt love letter to the Avengers, their stories, the actors who play them, and to the fans.

The Story: That damn Snap, eh? At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wiped out half of the galaxy’s population with a snap of his Infinity-Stone-enhanced fingers. After bearing witness to teammates and loved ones vanishing in swirls of dust and ash, the remaining Avengers struggle to live with the crippling grief and guilt of surviving the Snap… and of failing to prevent it. Some characters spiral into darkness; others are frozen in place – a few even manage to move on. But hope is rekindled when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) returns from the mysterious Quantum Realm, where the usual laws of physics, space and time do not apply…

The Great: Endgame is a storytelling triumph – not only does it bring together and pay off plots and ideas that were seeded over a decade ago, it builds solid, powerful, heartrendingly emotional narrative arcs for almost all of the original Avengers. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) must grapple with their pasts to figure out their futures, while Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) find themselves literally fighting to save their families. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) might provide much of the film’s comic relief, but both characters are also gifted with grace notes, growth and moments of true peace.

The Super-Great: The ability to juggle and create space for multiple perspectives and storylines in one film has been honed to a fine art by directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. But their narrative strategy feels virtuosic in Endgame, paired as it is with an ingenious plot device that allows the film to truly acknowledge the staggering depth and breadth of its own history. Suddenly, the emotional and narrative stakes are raised, as beloved characters are forced to re-examine their lives, stories and priorities. You might find yourself in tears and in stitches, frequently in the same scene, and this happens throughout the film – a testament to the Russo Brothers’ genius and their skills at anchoring even the most outlandish of storylines in humour and humanity.

The Not-So-Great: This is emphatically not a film for casual viewers – there is no entry point, no easing in, no exposition, to help you understand what the heck is going on if you haven’t watched most of the preceding films in the MCU. There are also a few logical fallacies and plotholes scattered throughout Endgame that will puzzle you the more you think about them – from the wobbly rules governing time travel to the fractured way in which the too-conveniently hyper-powered Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) pops in and out of the story.

Stan Service: This film, above all others in the MCU, feels like a heartfelt tribute to the very concept of Marvel itself, finding numerous ways to reward and delight true-blue fans. Naturally, it includes Stan Lee’s final appearance in the MCU, while folding in a host of other cameos and callbacks that reinforce the interconnectedness of the entire franchise – of all the stories that have been told before, especially the movie that started it all (Iron Man in 2008). There are even a couple of brilliant nods to comics lore, largely centred around the character of Captain America, that feel like the Russo Brothers are deliberately righting a few wrongs where some of Marvel Comics’ more controversial plot twists are concerned. (See: Nick Spencer’s run on Captain America: Steve Rogers.)

Cast-Iron MVP: Casting outside of the box has always been one of the MCU’s core strengths, with Oscar winners/nominees and character actors regularly popping up to play heroes and villains alike. That canny casting strategy pays off in spades in Endgame – especially when certain characters have relatively limited screen time but manage to make it count anyway. The undisputed stars of the movie, however, are the Avengers who started it all. Hemsworth continues to brilliantly dance along the knife-edge between comedy and pathos, while Ruffalo radiates charm and intelligence through ever-improving CGI as Banner and his not-so-mean, green alter ego: The Hulk. Johansson and Renner are given more to do in this film than ever before, and their combined efforts will shred your soul to pieces. Evans brings great warmth and strength to his stoic role, making it perfectly legitimate for you to weep and whoop for a man who’s – somewhat ridiculously – wrapped in an American flag. Above all, this double-whammy of Avengers films belongs, most fittingly, to Downey Jr. He still effortlessly injects Tony with snark and swagger, but also beautifully conveys every shade and layer of his character’s hard-won growth and maturity – giving us all the proof that we have never needed that Tony Stark has a heart.

Recommended? In every imaginable way. Endgame sets the bar as high as it can possibly go for superhero epics that balance enormous scale and jaw-dropping ambition with actual substance and genuine emotion. It’s the blockbuster movie event of our lifetimes, for very good reason – and it’s worth every minute you’ve invested in the MCU since 2008.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Over the past decade, Marvel has earned itself the benefit of the doubt. The studio has consistently delivered smart, funny, brave films that both embrace and transcend their comic-book origins. The 18 blockbuster movies produced since Iron Man first blasted off into the stratosphere in 2008 have not only reinvented superhero films as a genre – they’ve helped to legitimise it. Indeed, Marvel’s two most recent films – Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther – have received the kind of accolades usually reserved for edgy arthouse flicks.

And yet, it’s perfectly reasonable to be apprehensive about Avengers: Infinity War. This is a blockbuster film that’s been ten years in the making, its plot hinted at and scattered throughout 18 other movies. It features 30 or so characters, each with their own complex backstories and motivations. And all of them are coming together in a bid to stop a giant purple alien dude from destroying the universe. It sounds ridiculous, and feels impossible.

But that’s precisely what makes the final product such a monumental achievement. Masterfully directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Infinity War is bold, brainy filmmaking at its very best: the kind that will lift your spirits, blow your mind and shatter your soul – occasionally in the same scene. It demonstrates on an epic scale what Marvel has known all along: that special effects and tightly choreographed action are there to serve the story. For all its blockbuster spectacle (and there’s almost too much of that), the film is anchored by the heart, humour and humanity of its characters.

The film’s basic plot is simple: Thanos (played via motion-capture by Josh Brolin), intergalactic purveyor of death and destruction, has long been on the hunt for the six Infinity Stones that will give him complete control over the elemental building blocks of the universe. He dispatches his acolytes to Earth to retrieve the Time Stone, currently in the possession of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and carve the Mind Stone out of the forehead of Vision (Paul Bettany). It’s a literal existential threat so terrifying that all the heroes we’ve come to know and love – from the Avengers to the Guardians of the Galaxy – must put aside their differences and unite against a common foe.

From the outset, it’s immediately clear that neither the film’s directors nor screenwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) are interested in playing it safe. Most other superhero films are bled of high stakes – the hero in the title might suffer untold trauma, but it’s a super-safe bet that he or she will make it to the end alive. There’s no such guarantee here. Within the first ten minutes, we are confronted with the dark, twisted depths to which Thanos and his acolytes in the Black Order will sink in order to achieve their goals. Death, as well as genuine loss and sacrifice, is intrinsic to the narrative drumbeat that drives Infinity War ever forward, and the film is all the better for it.

That’s not to say the movie is a morbid and depressing experience. What’s so impressive about Infinity War is how it expertly juggles its constantly shifting tones and moods. When it’s funny (and it very often is), it’s deeply, truly funny. The film finds maximum joy in flinging characters together with merry abandon, mixing and matching ones you’d never have expected to share scenes or trade banter. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is floored by Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) godly muscles. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is charmed by the wit and intelligence of Shuri (Letitia Wright). And it’d be impossible to not be utterly delighted by Peter Dinklage’s inspired cameo. It’s a blithely tongue-in-cheek sensibility shared by Marvel’s best comic books, which understand that humour can make you care when it really counts.

And, boy, does Infinity War make it count. There are many heartbreakingly human moments threaded throughout the film: from the charming surrogate father-son dynamic shared by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Peter Parker (Tom Holland), to the undeniable love that ties Vision and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) together. In many ways, the film stands as a testament to the human capacity not just to love, but to love fiercely and beyond all logic. It’s right there when the unfailingly noble Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) declares, “We don’t trade lives”, even when giving up one could save billions.

There’s even a chilling echo of it in Thanos himself. A lesser film would have turned Thanos into a one-dimensional villain, much the way he’s all monster and maniac in the comic books. In Infinity War, however, Thanos’ end goal is surprisingly relevant when it comes to thinking and talking about the staggeringly overpopulated world in which we live today. There is, as it turns out, method to Thanos’ madness. It makes the tragic twists and turns in his relationships with his estranged adopted daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan), all the more unsettling.

For the most part, Infinity War does justice, too, to the many heroes who have been assembled for the film. The Russo brothers displayed great skill at interweaving multiple perspectives and character trajectories in Captain America: Civil War, and they do so again here, with twice as many characters. Even the most minor of supporting players, like Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes/War Machine, are given story beats that land. It helps that Marvel has always taken care to cast genuinely good actors in roles that might otherwise come off as silly and slight.

Even so, there are a few standouts amongst this enormous and enormously talented cast. Emotionally speaking, this is Downey’s film. He plays every note of Tony’s reluctant courage and bone-deep trauma, as he embarks on what he’s convinced is a suicide mission. He’s ably matched by Cumberbatch, who finds vulnerability even in his character’s most cunning and calculative move. Hemsworth, meanwhile, is given free rein to import the big-hearted comedic swagger of Thor: Ragnarok into this film – while also layering it with a deeply-felt, jagged grief for the losses he has suffered at the hands of Thanos and the universe.

In a film with so many moving parts, some elements don’t work quite as well. A couple of characters that you might have expected to be right at the forefront – including an original Avenger or two – fade into the background. The film tumbles from dizzying fight scene to dizzying fight scene, and while most of them are fantastically choreographed, there are some purely dumb moments that literally revolve around attempts to prevent Thanos from clenching his fist. In effect, this is a superhero mêlée that’s part over-the-top and part overkill, and might prove too much for those who don’t already care for this franchise and the characters in it.

Minor quibbles aside, though, Infinity War is yet another step in the right direction for Marvel. It continues the studio’s tradition of placing a premium on rich, complex storytelling that respects both its characters and its audiences. But it also refuses to make things easy for itself. The film ends even more bravely than it began, with a final ten minutes that will haunt and horrify you in equal measure. It’s a stroke of bold, brilliant genius – a narrative risk so audacious that you’ll want to follow Marvel wherever it goes next.

Basically: This movie will blow your mind and break your heart – and make you desperate to go back for more. Brave, brilliant and better than it has any right to be.

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

There’s no denying that Marvel Studios is – by most industry standards – almost ridiculously brave. Its president, Kevin Feige, has given the green light to any number of projects, decisions and personnel that would make most studio executives faint from horror. He resurrected Robert Downey Jr.’s career (it’s hard to remember, sometimes, that recovering alcoholic Downey was down and almost completely out when he became Iron Man), and trusted out-of-left-field directors like Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon and Kenneth Branagh to helm his studio’s riskiest and most expensive projects. And here comes Captain America: The Winter Soldier – one of the bravest decisions of them all, if not an entirely successful one.

After fending off the Chitauri invasion of New York, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) again tries to settle down to life in a country – and century – he no longer knows. The young man with the old-school values starts working for Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) in S.H.I.E.L.D., an agency meant to protect ordinary people from external threats, but finds himself asking a lot of worrying questions about the way things are being done. “You’re holding a gun to everyone on Earth,” he frets manfully at Fury, “and calling it protection.”

When it becomes clear that the methods and machines of S.H.I.E.L.D. have been badly compromised, Steve teams up with the two people he’s decided he can trust – results-oriented Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) a.k.a. Black Widow and war vet Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) a.k.a. The Falcon – to get to the bottom of a nefarious conspiracy that threatens to destroy Earth as he has come to know it. Oh, and he’s also being chased by another genetically-engineered super-soldier: the titular Winter Soldier, who might possess a secret or two of his own.

There’s an enormous amount to love about Captain America: The Winter Soldier. It is, truthfully, the boldest entry in Marvel’s canon yet, and not simply because it dares to bring superheroes into the gritty, twisty world of spy thrillers. That, by the way, is a great touch, particularly in a really quite spectacular car chase through the streets of Washington D.C., one that culminates in a literally heart-stopping encounter in Steve’s shadow-lit apartment.

What the film really dares to do is shake up the mythos of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe to date. Across several films now, Nick Fury has emerged as the sardonic but unquestionable defender of what’s good in the world. It’s somehow fitting that the most red-blue-and-white of superheroes should be the one who uncovers all the shades of grey. It’s a storyline that upsets the comfortable narrative of S.H.I.E.L.D. and its enforcers to date – including Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill, making a welcome return to the franchise – but also disrupts the way ahead (including, intriguingly enough, for Marvel’s companion television series, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.).

Directors Anthony and Joe Russo – best known for their work on cult TV sitcom Community – demonstrate a great flair for character development. This is a talky and occasionally silly picture, its plot getting more outlandish as it unravels, but the Russos make up for the occasional deficits in logic with a lot of heart and depth. Steve’s attempts to battle his survivor guilt allow him to connect with both Natasha and Sam, and there are some quietly effective moments when it becomes evident how much Natasha has come to care for Fury. Steve also gets the chance to re-connect with a couple of familiar faces from his long-buried past, which allows him to come somewhat painfully to terms with his strange, new-found life.

The film fares less well in terms of its unwieldy script, which marshals its unlikely elements together quite effectively but is – at the end of the day – formulaic and a tough sell. The big conspiracy lying at the broken heart of S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to be both predictable and ridiculous. It’s a narrative twist that feels a few decades too old, like Captain Rogers himself: a relic of a certain type of Cold War thriller on which this film is clearly modelled (think All The President’s Men), rather than an idea that better captures the nebulous shifts of the world’s current political climate.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier also frequently begs the question – more so than Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World did – ‘Where the heck are the rest of the Avengers?’ It beggars belief that only Steve and Natasha are reacting to the events of this film, which are catastrophic and earth-shaking enough to suggest that their old team-mates should really have popped in at some point. Surely Tony Stark would have something to say about the use of his doomsday technology in any scenario, much less this one!

The cast goes a long way towards making up for the hokier parts of the script. On paper, Steve is a rather one-note good guy, fighting for old-fashioned ideals in an unrecognisably debauched world. But Evans gives him heart and creates a huge amount of sympathy for the shield-wielding Captain America, particularly in a surprisingly emotional last-act confrontation with the Winter Soldier. This film also gives both Johansson and Jackson more to do than in any other Marvel movie to date, and they’re both so electrifying that you’ll continue to wonder why they haven’t yet received their own flagship movies.

The decision to cast Robert Redford – still hopelessly debonair at 77 years of age – as Alexander Pierce, Fury’s commanding officer and confidant, is a canny one. It’s a nice callback to the 1970s thrillers that made Redford’s name and no doubt inspired the grit and feel of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Redford delights in the role, and helps make it appear more complex than it really is.

When it comes down to it, Captain America: The Winter Soldier can leave a little something to be desired when taken on its own merits. Frequently, its grand ambitions outstrip the logic and power of its script. As an extension of what has become the world’s biggest franchise of blockbuster films, however, it’s an unmitigated success. It’s brainy, dark, and boldly rips apart the entire underlying narrative of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In that sense, at least, there’s no doubt that this is one of the finest blockbusters you’ll see this year.

Basically: A fine, bold entry in the Marvel canon, if not an entirely successful one.

Street Kings (2008)

I admit I watched this movie for one reason and one reason only: the fact that Hugh Laurie (that British – yes, British! – actor starring in House) has a minor role in it. I wasn’t expecting much from it, honestly. Reviews were far from uniformly good, and I’ve never thought much of Keanu Reeves’ ability to act, much less carry a dramatic role that requires him to do more than wear sunglasses and/or look impossibly cool/handsome while executing acts of incredible derring-do. (Which explains why the only roles I’ve so far been able to enjoy him in, and ‘enjoy’ is already a stronger term than would technically be accurate, are his incarnations as Neo and Constantine in the Matrix trilogy and Constantine respectively.) This all adds up to my main point, which is that I honestly didn’t expect much out of this film… and as a result, was pleasantly surprised by what I got in the end.

Tom Ludlow (Reeves) is a veteran LAPD cop who’s better known among his peers for being a ruthless, tough executor – devoted to his boss Captain Jack Wander (Forest Whitaker) – but not much of a thinker. He plunges into dangerous situations and displays his own disarming lack of morals when he roughs up criminals… it’s not that they aren’t criminals, per se, but one suspects that his way of handling their arrests (if they make it alive through a confrontation with him) would leave something to be desired in a court of law. Things start to go badly wrong, however, when Tom somehow ends up in a gruesome grocery store shootout in which his estranged former partner is shot dead and events spiral out of Tom’s control… especially with Wander’s long-time nemesis Captain James Biggs (Laurie) dying to bring Wander’s team down by opening investigations into Tom’s culpability led by promising young desk officer Paul Diskant (Chris Evans). Tom knows he’s innocent, however, even as the loyalties of those around him shift and shade into greys he doesn’t recognise.

Now, that probably doesn’t sound like much, but it’s mainly because I’m trying to avoid giving away too much of the plot. It’s the convoluted details and characters that make up the story, as you realise the murky inner workings of the LAPD – motivated more by political power play and bags of cash than the public good. As with other films based on screenwriter James Ellroy’s hard-boiled crime fiction, SK shows us cops as they (probably) really are: human beings at once depraved, clueless and lost, all trying to make sense of shifting moral sands and gaining advantage for themselves from the pain of others. In other words, it’s not much of a cheerful story, and this becomes clearer as Tom starts to uncover the secrets and betrayals that have always been littered around him but that he’s been too drunk or blind to notice. The film also has some truly heart-thumpingly fantastic action scenes – director David Ayer films fight scenes and bullet play almost lovingly, layering in shocks and tension beyond mere shootouts. A scene involving Tom taking Paul out into the streets and actually confronting some of the thugs the latter only monitors from behind a desk is almost unbearably exciting when said thugs start to retaliate with some pretty heavy gunfire.

That being said, SK has its flaws, including an ending that is ridiculously over the top and difficult to swallow – the confrontation between Whitaker and Reeves’ characters, which you imagine should be the best-crafted moment between the two as they resolve issues large and soaked in murder. Well, not so much. If you thought Whitaker was chewing the scenery in his Oscar-winning turn as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, you haven’t seen his performance in this film. And it’s dreadful. For the first two-thirds of SK, he’s fine. But in the last lap, he explodes across the screen with seriously messy energy that just doesn’t work – especially since he’s not given any good lines at all. The writing at this point is simply horrifyingly shoddy, going from nicely convoluted and dark to completely bizarre in the space of ten minutes. The resolution of the plot is treated so hamhandedly that it really ruins quite a lot of what went before it…

Including a surprisingly effective lead performance from Reeves. Aside from impossibly cool hero figures in flapping trench coats, it turns out that he might actually have a future playing against type as a boozy, not entirely respectable or sympathetic semi-crooked cop. At no point during the film (and I have felt this acutely in other performances of his I’ve had to suffer through) did I feel that Reeves was clunking across the screen, a wooden block who adamantly believes it can act but evidently cannot. Here, he lends a slightly dazed determination to Tom, which is appropriate given the character’s slow awakening to all the crap he’s surrounded himself with his entire career as it starts to drag him under. Whitaker is good, aside from that last scene, while Laurie – as American as he is in House – turns in a strong performance as the apparently morally upright Biggs, always ready to offer Tom another way to bring Wander down.

It’s always a treat to be surprised by a film – and surely SK surpassed quite a few of my expectations by turning out to be an engaging, dark film with a good performance from Reeves. I only wish it could have surprised me a little more by pulling off a better ending. It’s salvaged somewhat in the final moments, as Tom contemplates the situation he (again) finds himself in. But that’s not quite enough to save the film, unfortunately…

Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer

It’s so rare to see a sequel improve upon its predecessor that Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer comes almost as a breath of fresh air. Except, of course, that the original Fantastic Four movie wasn’t any great shakes to begin with – so that FF2 managed to come off a little more enjoyable, and quite a lot more entertaining, isn’t really saying all that much. It’s still an accomplishment though, that a sequel that didn’t need to be made actually improved upon the original to the extent that I’m not necessarily averse to an inevitable third installment of this franchise. (Maybe. Maybe.)

Celebrity mutant superheroes Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm (Jessica Alba) have been trying to get married for yonks – but every time they try, some world-shaking, globe-threatening event spoils the fun. Small surprise that during their elaborate, roof-top, fifth attempt to get hitched, dorky scientist Reed remains preoccupied with tracking the Silver Surfer (played by Doug Jones under a shimmering sheen of glorious CGI) – whose name is a pretty apt description of what the world-altering dude does. He leaves havoc in his wake as he scours Earth, changing seas to ice and boring enormous holes in a conveniently mathematical pattern across the face of the globe, and even cursing Sue’s cocky brother Johnny (Chris Evans) with a radically-changed molecular structure that has him swopping powers with any of his teammates when he touches them. With their rotten nemesis Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon) resurrected and thrown into the mix, can the Fantastic Four stop the Silver Surfer from delivering Earth on a silver platter (ha ha) to primal world-devouring force Galactus… even as they fret about their own personal journeys and the lives they’re still hoping to live away from the spotlight?

If that synopsis didn’t make it abundantly clear, FF2 is as shallow as a superhero movie can get. Which is pretty damn shallow – the characters’ concerns are paper-thin and disappointingly predictable. The mini-redemption arc on which arrogant, swaggery Johnny embarks is trite and tritely resolved, in a climactic final battle with the (supposedly winsomely) conflicted Surfer that defies both logic and emotional satisfaction. Human rockslide Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) barely gets a look-in, beyond serving as the blissfully happy, settled counterpoint to Johnny’s purportedly ego-ravaged single life. Even Reed and Sue’s squabbles about their future in the limelight and his relentless focus on the pursuit of scientific interests above and beyond their marriage feel manufactured. Even more difficult to really engage with on an emotional level is the shiny, literally polished Surfer, who drops mysterious hints – largely to a doe-eyed Sue who treads a very fine line between being annoying and nurturing – and secrets of the life he used to lead before he became Galactus’ herald.

If you’re coming to this movie hoping for complex characters or plot development (the X-Men franchise, despite its huge cast and other attendant flaws, does both better), you’ll be pretty thoroughly disappointed. But it’s hard to levy this as a real criticism against FF2, when it simply doesn’t have the artistic aspirations to be anything more than a cheerfully dumb, entertaining popcorn movie. The most visceral reaction the film-makers are expecting out of you? “Awesome – check out the CGI in that shot!” Yes, FF2 is very much one of those movies in which the outside trappings – special effects, glorious fight scenes, glossy new characters – are as important, if not more so, than piddling things like script, plot or character. And in this respect, at least, FF2 is a great watch: the Surfer’s metallic gleam, the easy way in which the characters use their powers without even thinking, all of this is, for the most part, seamlessly inserted into the story. What you’re paying money for is swooping chase sequences through the skies (check and double-check – surely one of the coolest moments is when the Fantasticar splits into three separate mini-space shuttles, all rounding on a surfboard-enabled Victor) and big-ticket action sequences (the team saving wedding guests from a listing helicopter or trying to keep the London Eye from crashing into oblivion). And that’s what you do get.

It’s even possible to say that this movie’s story and dialogue improves upon the first, which was painful and hackneyed. Here, the writers clearly didn’t have to grapple with establishing character, and could plunge into a series of cute little scenes all strung together to flesh out the movie. Johnny’s power-switching is an amazing device that provides for a great running joke, and even becomes – gasp! – essential to the plot. Completely nonsensical in terms of logic, of course, but nevertheless, part of the plot. The final 20 minutes of the movie are so direly predictable and poorly-written that you almost forget that most of FF2 is charming enough to sit through, and really rather funny in parts.

There isn’t much to say about the acting here, other than that the cast has eased into the grooves of their characters better and evince more familiarity when they interact with one another – though that’s not saying very much, either. Evans remains one of the better things about the franchise, managing to make Johnny’s boring redemption arc halfway interesting. But there’s a spark lacking here – partly in his own performance, and partly in the poor writing that attends his discovery of the maturity hidden within him – that means he’s not anywhere as delightful a presence as he was in the first movie. (There, he made the rest of it bearable.) Gruffudd, if nothing else, appears to have grown wonderfully into his role – and is eye-candy if nothing else. Chiklis hardly gets to do anything, which surely suggests he got a bum deal when signing his contract for FF. It’s unfortunate that the star of the franchise appears to be the one most criminally mismatched for her role – Alba’s distinctly olive colouring means that she doesn’t even look like a blonde, plus she’s far too young for the role (she’s supposed to be older than Johnny, for crying out loud!), which doesn’t bode well for her ability to truly convince as Sue… which is largely missing, anyway. So she spends most of her screen-time looking out of place, however valiantly she tries to deliver her lines with a measure of gravitas.

But, again, you’re just watching for the eye-candy, right Alba is pretty, Gruffudd and Evans are hot, the Surfer is sparkly and the action sequences are awesome. In a nutshell? That’s all you need to know about FF2. If you needed or expected anything more out of this movie, forget about it. Catch something else instead…

Sunshine (2007)

For a sci-fi movie about a bunch of astronauts and scientists blasting off into space with a nuclear payload to get the sun’s lazy ass fired up again, Sunshine‘s biggest accomplishment is perhaps in how it steadfastly labours on as an indie film, remaining (for the most part) an unassuming psychological thriller with no aspirations to being a blockbuster. Aside from a questionable ending that comes worryingly close to upsetting everything good that had gone before it, Sunshine emerges – under Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s firm guidance – as a surprisingly smart, tense chiller of a film that has more to say than you’d imagine… especially since (and this is another coup on Boyle’s part) the plot is almost disappointingly clichéd and the entire set-up is painfully reminiscent of any trapped-in-a-bunker situation inspired by Lord Of The Flies.

Welcome to Icarus II: a massive spaceship carrying a batch of scientists, led by serious-minded captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada), and a nuclear payload hopefully boasting enough horsepower to reignite the sun’s dying embers. With Earth literally freezing to death miles and miles and light years below, the crew of the gloomily-named Icarus II – successor to the failed first mission that disappeared without a trace seven years earlier – have to brave years away from their families in a bid to save the world. Lofty missions, however, are not sufficient to help in the face of human error. The failure of engineer Trey (Benedict Wong) to recalibrate the ship’s shields against the still-flaming glare of the sun is what first causes everyone on Icarus II to face up to the very real possibility that they might never live to see their mission succeed, much less return to their lives on Earth. Soon, the crew is fighting for their lives – turning one against the other, against themselves, against a horrific force of madness, that sees the death count ratchet up as their chances of success plummet proportionately. As Icarus II seems headed towards the same fate as its unfortunate predecessor, can ostensible star of the enterprise, nuclear physicist Capa (Cillian Murphy), save the day?

To be honest, the plot of Sunshine isn’t really what’s going to hook you. In fact, it sounds rather like a lot of manufactured pablum, and certainly not something you’d imagine could approximate original in any way. In one sense, that’s true: Boyle, working off a script by Alex Garland, isn’t putting out a breathtakingly different movie… he’s just cobbling together the best elements of deeply human, psychological drama (as his characters rail and plot against each other) and suspense thriller (as more characters struggle with their mortality in nail-biting sequences set in the frigidity of space or the close confines of a washed-out psych unit on Icarus II), and trusting that that’s enough to keep his audience entertained. For the first two-thirds of this movie, he succeeds almost beyond reason – watching the film is a thoroughly absorbing experience, despite the nagging feeling that you’ve seen it all before.

I suspect a large part of this is due to a winning combination of the largely unknown cast (Murphy is at the head of a motley crew of mostly indie actors) matching their characters to a T. It helps that Garland has cooked up a combustible mix of people whose relationships keep the movie grounded in an emotional reality that prevents Sunshine from drifting in the direction of complete implausibility. This is particularly so in the form of passive good guy Capa and abrasive, impatient hothead Mace (Chris Evans) – the former just wants to get his payload safely into the heart of the sun, willing to take chances on rendezvousing with the lost Icarus I so that he can double the too-slim chances of success. Mace, of course, doesn’t see the point in deviating from the set mission, and brutal arguments ensue, even as their fellow crew members take sides or drop dead… one by one. Boyle keeps an already tense situation simmering as the characters bicker and clash: whether it’s Mace blaming Capa for the detour; second-in-command Harvey (Troy Garity) screaming bloody murder to be given a space suit so that he can survive a mid-space leap back to Icarus II from the dusty shell of its predecessor; or botanist Corazon (Michelle Yeoh) hinting to select members of the crew that the death of some individuals might make or break their mission following the devastating loss of more than half of the ship’s viable oxygen supply.

The actors pretty much all step up to the plate, rendering even the most minor of characters memorable for the brief moments they’re onscreen. Murphy is fine as the hero of the film, lending his wide-eyed intelligence to the portrayal of Capa; performances that really stand out among the second-string actors include Garity’s high-strung Harvey and Cliff Curtis’ Searle (the ship psychologist who seems a little too eager to get to the core of the sun). But the real breakout star is Evans, who effectively shakes off any stigma that might have attached itself to him as a pretty-boy actor – given his role as the cocksure Johnny in his biggest hit yet, The Fantastic Four. Here, as Sunshine‘s anti-hero and most fascinating character, Evans is electrifying – whether he’s storming through the cockpit hurling abuse at Capa, or coldly gathering votes to have a fellow crew-mate killed to preserve the scant oxygen on board Icarus II.

That all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? And truly, for a good two-thirds of the film, Boyle has mixed and matched the disparate plot elements and indie actors to produce something approaching movie alchemy – a tense, engaging thriller that probes human psychology while retaining a genuinely claustrophobic feel entirely appropriate to a film set in deep, otherwise unreachable space. Unfortunately, Sunshine seems to give up on its earlier promise as the last reel unspools: it turns into a somewhat schlocky, mostly annoying horror film, as a footnote of a character causes more devastation and confusion on Icarus II than the crew members had already done all by themselves, thank you very much. It’s difficult to reconcile what had gone before (admittedly, it was a film that didn’t touch on the smarter, deeper issues it obliquely raised, but it at least focused quite admirably on character development) to how the movie finally sputters to a close: as the remaining characters still alive dodge a freaky movie monster – whose survival is suspect, scientifically impossible and quite illogical – we close the entire film, which had previously been bleak, raw and quite willing to show painful, unhappy deaths for individual characters, in what amounts to little more than a damp squib of an ending.

Which is a real shame – until that point, Sunshine was, surprisingly to me, in the running as one of the best films I’d seen all year. (It is only April, but a remarkable feat nevertheless since I’ve so far seen almost forty!) Now it will have to settle for being good, but not great. If you can, however, bear to watch a movie that’s two-thirds fantastic and one-third disappointingly crap, don’t let this one pass you by: it’s rewarding and frustrating in equal measure.