Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3

The Guardians of the Galaxy saga comes to a thoroughly anticlimactic and disagreeable end with this mostly interminable entry, which finds the title characters, including Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill and Dave Bautista’s Drax, forced to spring into action after Rocket (Bradley Cooper) is abducted by a fearsome enemy (Chukwudi Iwuji’s The High Evolutionary). Filmmaker James Gunn, armed with his own screenplay, delivers a relentlessly slick and padded-out endeavor that strikes all the wrong notes from the word go, as the movie, which runs a punishing 150 minutes (!), essentially (and effectively) pummels the viewer with one long, drawn-out action set-piece after the next with little thought towards forward momentum – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a grating and headache-inducing overuse of computer-generated special effects. The lack of streamlining (ie why are there so many narrative threads?) paves the way for an uninvolving midsection that slowly-but-surely cancels out the film’s few positive attributes (eg an appearance by a typically charming Nathan Fillion), and it’s difficult, too, not to question the inclusion of an ugly, unpleasant subplot exploring Rocket’s origins – which, when combined with a predictably loud and endless climax, does cement Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3‘s place as an almost entirely objectionable comic-book adaptation.

* out of ****