Brief Story Line
Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh - Dune: Part Two, Don't Worry Darling etc) had been doing various special operations for Director of CIA Valentina de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Onward, Veep TV series etc) but feeling unhappy with her life and dirty job. During her supposed last assignment, Yelena met with others like her who also handled same kind of ops, such as John Walker aka U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell - Monarch: Legacy of Monsters TV series, The Woman in the Window etc), Ava Starr aka Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen - Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, Killjoys TV series etc) and Antonia Dreykov/Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko - Sentinelle, Treason mini series etc). When they realized something was wrong, together with the mysterious Bob (Lewis Pullman - Top Gun: Maverick, Salem's Lot 2024 version etc), all hesitantly had to work together to escape.
Meanwhile Senator Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan - Fresh, Captain America: Civil War etc) was trying to look for proof of Valentina's dangerous works to impeach her. Along the way Bucky decided to work together with Yelena and the others, including her adoptive father Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian (David Harbour - A Working Man, Violent Night etc) to fight against an even larger threat.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well that was fun! My wife and I had a pretty awesome time seeing this film even though we were kind of disturbed by the loud voice and frequent useless remarks by the person sitting two seats beside us & an audience whose smart watch was set at the brightest. Luckily the film was entertaining and could cover the annoyance of their behavior. Anyway this film did not exactly have the greatest start for me despite some interesting early action sequence. I personally felt the story only became exciting when Yelena met others for the first time. The chemistry among these "heroes" was a joy to see with their nonstop bickering and lack of trust.
Subsequently the film became even more hilarious with the addition of Alexei who was the only one really delighted cooperating with the others. He also showed the obvious child-like happiness of working as heroes and became famous. Like in any other movies where a group of people who used to work alone had to join forces, the pattern was always predictable and this one was no exception. There was no surprise and we could already knew what would happen in the end. What my wife and I did not foresee was the ending which caught us off guard. I only realized later after reading that it would explain the asterisk sign behind the title.
The action itself I think was pretty decent. There were few occasional good looking fights though to me the finale was just so so. It was not spectacular kind, but OK enough to keep us entertained. What I did not get was the sound effects. For a supposed Dolby Atmos system, they did not sound that great (perhaps the movie screened in our studio was the standard one). Btw, the movie had a duration of 126 minutes that I thought was fitting and sufficient to cover the whole story and because it was fun to see, did not feel overly long. Like other Marvel Studios movies in general, this one had a humorous mid end credit scene and a post end credit scene to tease us for upcoming story which you would not want to miss if you are hard core Marvel fans.
This film was enjoyable due to its cast who looked like they were having fun. In this regard, I thought the director Jake Schreier did a great job. It was a pretty amazing feat considering he did not have that many directing credits in the past except for Paper Towns, critically acclaimed Robot & Frank and several episodes of TV series. The writers were Joanna Calo (exec producer of The Bear, BoJack Horseman etc) and Eric Pearson who was experienced in writing Marvel movies like Thor: Ragnarok and Black Widow. In addition to the cast I mentioned above, there were few others in support roles such as Geraldine Viswanathan (Blockers, Miracle Workers TV series etc) as Valentina's assistant Mel, Wendell Pierce (Jack Ryan TV series, The Gift etc) as Congressman Gary and several in minor capacity.
Overall this was an exciting and fun Marvel antiheroes movie for us. Though it focused on antiheroes, it did not feel too dark and there was even a lot of humor that would make us laugh. While the final fight might not be too spectacular, the rest were not that underwhelming either. The characters were really the stars of this film and their chemistry was what made this likable. Just a bit sorry that one of the character did not get the chance to show the capability more. One other thing was few of the characters (and their back story) were shown in previous movies and series, so we might need a brief crash course to remember them. However it did not make the story difficult to understand, just a bit of missing info. I understand this was well received by critics and audience as well which is great news for Marvel execs. So if you are into a fun, light hearted movies about antiheroes who had to work together to save the world, then you would have great time watching this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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