Wonder Woman review

Both critics and geeks have been justifiably nervous that the first female-fronted superhero film of our modern-day fanboy renaissance is being brought to us by Zach Snyder and Warner Bros’ DC Comics cinematic universe; the same universe that’s brought such us large-scale disappointments as “Man of Steel,” as well as last year’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” and “Suicide Squad.” For many years, Marvel producer Kevin Feige was curiously noncommittal about the possibility of funding a female-driven entry into his web of interconnected action films, but in a rush to catch up with the successful Disney entity, Warners has released a “Wonder Woman” film that breaks the tradition of  their current output by being surprisingly good.

We were first introduced to Gal Gadot’s sword and shield wielding Amazonian as a peripheral character in “Batman v Superman,” but here director Patty Jenkins and screenwriter Allen Heinberg focuses in on her origin and gives us the emotional and philosophic context we need to truly care about the admittedly cheesy character. This time we meet Princess Diana as a trained warrior of the all-female demigod tribe created by Zeus to protect the human race. After the tribe has spent years hiding and training in their magically hidden island of Themyscira, awaiting for the day the Greek god Aries returns to finish them off, Diana discovers a human WWI spy named Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) who crash lands in their ocean. When he tells her of the devastations and atrocities he’s fighting in his home-world, Diana travels back with him to find and kill a German military leader named Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston), who she suspects is a disguised Aires orchestrating the stage for human destruction.

Jenkins, who was previously attached to direct Marvel’s “Thor: The Dark World” before leaving the project over disagreements with the studio, has a firm hand on the pulpy tone of the source material. The first third of the film plays like a large-scale episode of “Zena: Warrior Princess” while the rest resembles the popcorn-flavored fantasy of adventure flicks like “Raiders of the Lost Arc” and “The Rocketeer.” These worlds are joined more seamlessly than one might think and the Jenkins’ focus on Diana/Wonder Woman as a sturdy center of consciousness allows us to accept and even admire her idealistic world-view when it comes to altruistic justice.

Gadot and Pine also bring a lot of life and pathos to their characters and unlike the DC’s recent cinematic output, this film allows for scenes to breathe and build to moments of action and suspense instead of always rushing to the next big set-piece. Much like Kenneth Branagh’s first “Thor” movie, “Wonder Woman” also includes fish-out-of-water humor as the warrior princess tries to wrap her head around the peculiarities of turn of the century Europe. 

Given that so much of this movie is entertaining and easy to invest in, it’s unfortunate that Patty Jenkins attended Zach Snyder‘s school of hyper-stylized action direction.  The battle sequences are filmed using his signature slow-mo-speed-up technique, occasionally pausing the action to frame corny, self-satisfied, music-video glory shots. The final battle between Wonder Woman and Aries separates Diana from the emotionally-driven war sequences, only so that the film can pay off the genre fans with an overpowered comic-book boss-battle, wherein the foes are shooting lightning out of their hands and trucks and building are flung back and forth. With that noted, it’s a common mistake for these kinds of movies to over-climax and I can’t fault Jenkins, who’s never directed a film on this budget, for sliding into an easy aesthetic trope.

“Wonder Woman” knows what works in the superhero origin drama and it plays its cards carefully. Unlike the previous entries in the misbegotten DCU, it doesn’t try to cram in loads of exposition and tangential DC Comics world-building for the sole purpose of setting up future sequels, remembering to succeed on its own as a standalone adventure. Many will write about the gender politics of the film and it is significant that this movie exists as it does for young girls to root for a hero of their own, though Pine and Gadot’s awkwardly suggestive banter sometimes undercuts the strong feminist themes. The film is a hair too long and slips into headache-inducing destruction by its end, but too much of it works too well for me to criticize the picture for simply leaning into familiar genre tropes.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Jun-2017

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Wonder Woman."

Suicide Squad review

After the clunky and underachieving disaster that was “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” the stakes for David Ayer’s “Suicide Squad” were raised too high. Though Warner Brothers never planned it, because BvS failed to live up to its own hype, this quirky film, inspired by a 4th-teir DC comics property, is now expected to give Warner's fledgling movie universe enough fuel to drive fan interest to the next spin-off. Given that “Suicide Squad” is an already an odd premise—grouping imprisoned super-villains to fight for the government against their will--and features mostly unknown characters, a property this idiosyncratic and niche was hardly positioned to save an entire franchise from failing. Making things all the more difficult, Ayer’s attempts at dark satire and genre subversion are undercut by the studio’s bottom-line priorities and the narrative has been ravaged by intrusive re-shoots and bad editing.

Following the events of “Batman v Superman,” government intelligence decides to create a team of mutants and misfits of their own in case another ‘meta-human’ decides he or she above the law. Agent Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) brings together the unlikely ensemble of a hitman named Deadshot (Will Smith), a dangerous pyro-kinetic named Diablo (Jay Hernandez), the unicorn obsessed maniac Boomerang (Jai Courtney), a sewer dwelling cannibal called Killer Crock (Adewele Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a possessed mystic named Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) and an unpredictable Joker obsessive named Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie). Once the team is assembled they are set on the first mission to stop Enchantress when her vaguely defined witch spirit is reunited with an ancient Mezzo-American war-god, unleashing a horde of amorphous, blob-headed bad-guys onto the city streets.

The movie almost never works either as a streamlined superhero peice or a darkly humorous action-comedy, but as misbegotten or as poorly executed as it might have been I can’t bring myself to dismiss Ayer’s ambitions. There are moments in this swirling, crass, adolescent and tone-deaf glorified videogame that approaches a level of hysteria and anarchy that too few mainstream comic book movies dare to embrace. Even this year’s “Deadpool,” which was celebrated for it’s hard-R raunchiness, played it safe when it came to defining who we’re supposed to root for, who we’re supposed to hate and it created a safe relatability when it came to the protagonist’s goals and desires. “Suicide Squad” muddies all of those waters and celebrates the sickest and most deranged motives within its characters, but it fails to take its punk-rock attitude beyond the surface into the thematic territory where it could have made a bigger impact.

All the actors seem committed and game to embody these larger than life sociopaths—Margot Robbie walks away with whole movie and Will Smith almost reminds us why we liked him in the first place—but the filmmakers are never as committed to the story. The generic and buffoonish cartoon plot is treated merely as an apparatus to house the ensemble and to highlight the film’s overbearing aesthetic choices. The overall production design seems to be inspired by a 13-year old’s pog collection from the mid-90s and the groan-inducing jukebox soundtrack is filled with painfully on-the-nose rock music selections. It doesn’t help that the actors, as hard as they try, never compensate for the one-note, smart-alecky dialogue.  

Somewhere in the creases and corners of this unmitigated disaster exists the seeds of a more interesting movie.  Jared Leto’s minor appearance as the Joker is occasionally exciting but like everything else is buried under the larger beats of the silly and uninteresting A-plot. I can’t help but wonder if a movie about Joker and Harley that fully explores their toxic romance might have been more satisfying (think Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers” in Gotham). Perhaps if the film had been allowed to be R-rated and these supposedly dangerous criminals were forced to plow through the Joker’s hench-men or an opposing military instead of mystically powered, faceless ghouls, the movie could have retained the grit and immediacy of Ayer’s previous work (“Fury” “End of Watch”).  As it stands, “Suicide Squad” is an empty-headed and tonally frustrating missed opportunity and yet another stumbling block in DC/Warner’s desperate attempt to catch up with Marvel’s blockbuster winning streak.

Grade: C- 

Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug-2016

Listen to this week's episode of Jabber and the Drone to hear more conversation about "Suicide Squad."