Movie Review: Thunderbolts

Movie number 19 of 2025

The Movie: Thunderbolts

The Cinema: Hoyts Victoria Gardens

Runtime: Two hours and six minutes

Stars: A very solid 4

Marvel is back doing what it does best - making very entertaining movies. Over the last few years, particularly after the end of the first tranche of The Avengers, there's been some less-than-optimal movies (Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania and the X-Men films spring to mind) but there's been some good ones too. 

And if you're up on your Marvel Cinematic Universe, you get to do the mental tallies in your head as to where you've seen everybody and what they're up to. 

And with Thunderbolts, it really does help if you're up on your MCU lore. The films you really need to know about are The Black Widow, Captain American: The Winter Soldier and Ant Man (to a lesser extent). It all helps with context. 

But even without all of this, Thunderbolts is a good film. 

The tagline for this film goes as follows: After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts.

As a brief rundown, Yelena Bolova (Florence Pugh) is working as a mercenary for Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfuss) a bent American politician. She's on the job in Kuala Lumpur when the job she's on goes a bit strange and she starts to see some not-so-great elements of her life come back into her mind. She goes to see her father, Alexei (David Harbour). They've been estranged for a while. 

Valentina sends Yelena on a last mission, which turns out to be a suicide mission. It's now that a new Captain America (Wyatt Russell) and Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen) are sent there on the same mission. It is also here that we meet the somewhat gormless Bob (Lewis Pullman) who turns out to be a super-baddie looking for a redemption arc.

There's lots of great things about this film. The action is unrelenting, but that's all Marvel Movies. 

Eric Pearson, Joanna Calo and Kurt Busiek have written a killer script, with just the right mixture of pathos and sarcasm. It keeps the action moving, while giving some very needed back stories to the characters. This has far more emotional awareness than many marvel films

Jake Schreier's direction is also wonderful, keeping the action moving, while allowing for the more pensive scenes to ring true. 

This film belongs to Florence Pugh, Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Lewis Pullman. The former we've seen at her best in The Black Widow. She just keeps getting better.  Louis-Dreyfuss makes a brilliant baddie, the corrupt government official who is a nemesis to the crew. Lewis Pullman is a delight as the underestimated Bob. He's both deep and hilarious. 

Reading other reviews of Thunderbolts, there is a consensus that this is one of the best Marvel films to come out in the last few years. Sassy, intelligent, funny and setting things up for the next couple of films which are due out soon. 

As always, you do need to sit through the credits to see what is coming next (which in this case is the new version of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.)

Hopefully this has sent the MCU on a redemption arc of it's own. Standing alone, this was one of Marvel's better offerings. 

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