Thunderbolts*

Directed by Jake Schreier, Thunderbolts* follows ragtag superheroes, including Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, and David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov, as they’re forced to put aside their differences after a powerful new threat emerges. It’s an appealing premise that’s employed to sporadically entertaining yet mostly uninvolving effect by Schreier, as the filmmaker, armed with Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo’s screenplay, delivers an erratically-paced blockbuster that feels like its spinning its wheels for much of its first half – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a first act that’s hardly as impactful (or even interesting) as one might’ve anticipated. (It doesn’t help, either, that the picture’s been suffused with characters of a somewhat underwhelming nature, which is a disappointment, to be sure, given the top-notch efforts of the various performers.) And while the picture boasts at least one legitimately enthralling sequence, wherein the protagonists attempt to battle a figure with Superman-like powers, Thunderbolts* builds towards a distressingly lackluster (and palpably padded-out) third act that ensures the whole thing concludes with a whimper – thus securing the movie’s place as a typically hit-and-miss Marvel release that’s more than latter than the former.

** out of ****