12 Strong

Thor: The Dark Stallion

Grade: C +

Director: Nicolai Fuglsig

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Michael Peña, Navid Negahban, Trevante Rhodes, Thad Luckinbill, William Fichtner, and Rob Riggle

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 9 min.

Thor gets promoted to Captain America in 12 Strong, in which Chris Hemsworth plays Green Beret Captain Mitch Nelson, inspired by real-life Green Beret Captain Mark Nutsch, who led a twelve-soldier U.S. Special Forces team in Afghanistan during the months following 9/11. Their daunting, three-week mission is to link up with local warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum (Navid Negahban), one of several tempestuous leaders of the Northern Alliance, and fight their way to retake the Taliban stronghold of Mazar-i-Sharif.

This is a true story about laudable gallantry, yet a film built around a novelty—the fact that members of Nutsch/Nelson’s ODA 595 unit rode horses alongside their Afghan counterparts to traverse the treacherous terrain. The rest of the time it’s all camo and camaraderie colliding with a hail of bullets, bombs, and bombast. Ted Tally and Peter Craig’s script is full of gung-ho platitudes and agitprop—yes, the Taliban’s treatment of women is horrific, but a scene in which the baddie de jour executes a mother for teaching her children how to read it utterly untethered from the rest of the narrative.

The real monotony is saved for the action sequences, ostensibly the film’s hallmark. When they’re not galloping into battle, Nelson and Dostum size up each other’s killer eyes under the cover of American aerial armaments. Director Nicolai Fuglsig spends a lot of time with the heart-pattering particulars of how to map bombing coordinates, then revels in the shock and awe of explosives delivered by unseen B-52s. When the firefights do occur, they’re fraught with confusion, shot from disjointed perspectives and backdrops. Moreover, Fuglsig adopts the Lone Survivor school of modern military filmmaking, where it takes a dozen bullets to take down a single American soldier yet the endless reservoir of faceless cannon fodder are dispatched with single head shots. The film is constructed like a video game, with avatars instead of characters and each village serving as a new level.

The only things lending 12 Strong any verisimilitude are its “Based on a true story” prologue and its end card reciting the legacy of Mazar-i-Sharif’s liberation and what happened to its liberators. Earnestness abounds, but this war-meets-cowboy-meets-superhero movie from producer Jerry Bruckheimer doesn’t rise above its mise-en-scène.

In the Heart of the Sea

I tell ya, he was ten stories high if he was a foot.

Grade: B –

Director: Ron Howard

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Benjamin Walker, Cillian Murphy, Tom Holland, Ben Whishaw and Brendan Gleeson

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 2 min.

Advertised as “the incredible true story that inspired Moby-Dick,” director Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea is actually more of an audacious prequel. In 1820, the Nantucket whaleship Essex was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean. Much of the crew spent months at sea, resorting to sundry unspeakables in order to survive. The story is known to have piqued author Herman Melville's literary interest, resulting in his magnum opus published in 1851.

Howard seeks to tell the true tale of the Essex in In the Heart of the Sea, relying principally on Nathaniel Philbrick's 2000 non-fiction book of the same name. Philbrick draws largely from a manuscript written by Thomas Nickerson, a teenage cabin boy aboard the Essex, which was lost for over a century until found and ultimately published in 1984.

Dissatisfied with merely retelling this “incredible true story,” Howard conflates fact with fiction by creating an odd framing device wherein Melville (Ben Whishaw) visits Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson) in 1850 Nantucket to transcribe Nickerson’s harrowing account, but only after getting Nickerson liquored up and paying off his wife. While Melville is known to have relied on (and perhaps even written) the published account of Owen Chase, the Essex’s first mate, there’s no indication that Melville ever met or consulted with Nickerson.

The result is a film not merely devoid of the social symbolism in Melville’s praised prose, but also one that shoehorns Melville into its nautical narrative in order to appropriate the Moby-Dick mystique whilst harpooning its author legacy.

The tension aboard the Essex is the same waterlogged tiff between captain and first mate familiar to the Bounty, or the Caine, the Alabama in Crimson Tide, or, well, the Pequod. Chase (Liam Hemsworth, who strikes a dashing pose) is passed over again for captaincy of a whaler in lieu of blue-blooded greenhorn George Pollard Jr. (Benjamin Walker). Naturally, Pollard’s inexperience alienates the seafaring crew, especially after he nearly gets the ship swamped in a squall. Still, the Essex sails on since the only thing Pollard and Chase agree upon is that the faster they harvest whale oil, the sooner they can end their voyage.

A paucity of cetacea carries the Essex over 1,000 nautical miles west of South America, where a game of whales is seemingly protected by a mammoth, barnacled white whale with an ill temper and a spite for boat hulls. The ensuing attack leaves Pollard, Chase and the teenage Nickerson (Tom Holland) among the several survivors stranded at sea.

The visual effects and set design are stunning, particularly during storm scenes and whale hunts. Indeed, whaling and life at sea are dissected in illuminating detail, although all the cries of “Avast!” commands to “Swab the deck!” sound too cliched at times.

Storytelling has always been Howard’s stumbling block, and there’s a plodding predictability to these proceedings. The few themes scattered about—man’s place in nature; capitalism’s caste system—are obvious and underlined. And despite Gleeson’s earnest attempts at pathos, it feels like filler whenever the film regularly returns to Melville and the snockered Nickerson.

In the Heart of the Sea is a good film demonstrably short of any semblance of greatness. In other words, it’s a Ron Howard film. Although a movie moored to one of America’s great novels, this feels like the one that got away.

Vacation

Grade: C

Director:  John Francis Daley, Jonathan M. Goldstein

Starring: Ed Helms, Christina Applegate, Skyler Gisondo, Steele Stebbins, Leslie Mann, Chris Hemsworth and Charlie Day

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 1 hr. 39 min.

“I've never even heard of the original vacation,” says young Kevin Griswold on the eve of another misbegotten cross-country family foray in the sequel “Vacation.”

“Doesn't matter,” deadpans Rusty (Ed Helms), scion to Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold. “The new vacation will stand on its own.”

Not exactly. Vacation is far removed from the original National Lampoon’s Vacation, the 1983 Harold Ramis farce that introduced the world to the Griswolds and their ill-fated misadventure to Walley World, the fictitious amusement park. The film echoed the frustrations of the Reagan-era middle-class and their proud but elusive attempts to realize the American dream.

The new Vacation is a retread as noxious as the Arkansas sewage pond that Rusty, wife Debbie (Christina Applegate), and sons James (Skyler Gisondo) and Kevin (Steele Stebbins) unwittingly wade into en route from Chicago for a return visit to Walley World.

Rusty, now grown into a veritable Clark clone, is a hapless airline pilot for an econo carrier with a stale love life and no respect from his sons. James is a literary-loving introvert, while the foul-mouthed Kevin concocts devious ways to torture his older brother.

So Rusty piles the family into a rented minivan bound for California—if you’re wondering why a commercial pilot couldn’t simply obtain discount tickets so his family could fly to Walley World, well, he can. But then we’d be deprived of such detours as Memphis, Tenn. (accurate U.S. geography not included) to revisit Debbie’s drunken sorority days back when she was known as “Debbie Do-Anything.” A whitewater ride in the Rockies goes awry thanks to a manic depressive guide (Charlie Day). And when Rusty stops to visit sister Audrey (Leslie Mann) and her blow-dried husband (Chris Hemsworth) in Texas, we’re treated to cannibal cows and Hemsworth’s 6-pack and sheathed tube steak.

Along the way, writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein revisit the hot blond in a convertible scene from the original Vacation just to wreck it. It’s an apt metaphor for this risible reprise, which is low on satire and high on gross-out gags, beginning literally seconds into the crude opening credits montage. And let me be clear: profane children are never funny.

Indeed, whenever you hear Lindsey Buckingham’s “Holiday Road,” or Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo pop up for a shot of nostalgia, it comes with a weariness that causes you to momentarily question your affinity for the original National Lampoon’s Vacation.

It’s a bad sign when the funniest character in a comedy is the car—even The Love Bug had Buddy Hackett. The Griswolds’ fictional “Tartan Prancer,” known as “the Honda of Albania,” is a comically inconvenient MPV that has outside cup holders, a CB radio, retractable powers cords designed for corkscrew-shaped outlets, and two fuel tanks with half the gas mileage. The incoherent key fob with a dozen buttons emblazoned with unhelpful symbols like a rabbit, rocket ship, muffin and swastika.

More of this updated, whip smart humor would have helped this Vacation actually stand on its own. Instead, this road trip hits a dead end.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Earth's Mightiest Millennials

Grade: B –

Director: Joss Whedon

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Don Cheadle

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 21 min.

The true conflict driving Avengers: Age of Ultron (hereinafter Avengers 2) isn’t the titular troupe of titans versus the titular James Spader-voiced, Tony Stark-conceived humanoid answer to a global SDI. No, it’s the battle between the insatiable craving for summer whiz-bang BOOM and the distinctive character development that once distinguished the Marvel Cinematic Universe but now seems to only hurtle its serial storylines toward a climactic who-knows-what. To borrow a phrase from another comic book movie milieu, “You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Something similar can be said for superhero sequels.

Amid the incessant drumbeat of quips and clobbering, Stark / Ironman (Robert Downey Jr.) embraces his full-fledged inner Dr. Frankenstein, crafting an A.I. named Ultron that decodes its directive to protect the planet as ridding it of puny humans. Suffice it to say when it comes to artificial intelligence, Avengers 2 is to Alex Garland’s recently released Ex Machina what Transformers is to Selma on race relations.

Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is now the Hulk whisperer, an Ann Darrow to the not-so-jolly green Kong (Mark Ruffalo). Clint Barton / Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) gets a bucolic backstory, a farmstead full of younguns and firewood that needs choppin’. The new Maximoff twins, quicksilver Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and telekinetic Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), need re-education after their harsh Eastern European upbringing and Hydra-experimentation. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is homesick or something.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) also shows up, as does War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Idris Elba, and Stellan Skarsgård, and Anthony Mackie. Even Paul Bettany, the voice of J.A.R.V.I.S., finally gets a body.

Once again, this assembly must overcome their internal insecurities. Once again, the alpha Avengers must stave off mankind’s annihilation along with the destruction of entire city, while finger-wagging Captain America (Chris Evans) and the others busy themselves with cannon fodder and needing “to get these people to safety.” Indeed, as the powerful Ultron yearns to evolve into an omnipotent cyborg named Vision, his army of mechanical clones are somehow susceptible to a single strike from an arrow or handgun.

Great action movies balance heft with heart. But here our heroes, coursing with spirits and testosterone, close down a party by seeing who can lift Thor’s hammer—metaphor alert!—and only mention CEO Pepper Potts and Nobel Prize-winner Jane Foster to compare significant others. And as for the women who do make the cut, Natasha is both barren and branded an aggressive flirt, an Asian scientist (Claudia Kim) only has goo-goo eyes for Thor, and Wanda cowers in fear until a pep talk from Hawkeye unleashes her latent Scarlet Witch.

“They’re a mess,” says Barton’s pregnant wife (Linda Cardellini), referring to the avenging heroes and not their conflated yet cursory narratives. As summer flicks go, Avengers 2 isn’t a bad movie, just a confounding one. I giddily enjoyed the Hulk tangling with Stark’s colossus Hulk Buster armor as much as the next fanboy. But the film elucidates why this Marvel collective was and is best built on its sturdy standalones, where the principals and plotlines have room to develop. It was fun to see Earth's Mightiest Heroes band together in the first Avengers. This time around, they’re just getting in each other’s way.

Blackhat

How do you expect me to hack into

their system without my hammer?

Grade: C +

Director: Michael Mann

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Viola Davis, Tang Wei, Wang Leehom and John Ortiz

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 13 min.

You can’t technically refer to Blackhat as Michael Mann pastiche because Mann is its director. But this cyber-thriller—booted from its initial awards-season release date to the January junkyard—runs the gambit of Mann tropes: copious close-ups; reflective lighting; night time cinematography; motorboats powering against a cityscape backdrop; and, of course, a signature, protracted firefight (sans soundtrack, of course).

But even this stylistic revue can’t overcome Thor in front of a laptop. Or Viola Davis wearing a bad weave. Or a hacker villain making a dry run at cleaning up on soybean and tin futures by triggering a nuclear meltdown in Asia. From Mann’s (first) tracking shot along a microchip’s circuitry to a shot from the underside of a computer keyboard, it’s the venerable filmmaker who exhibits the tin ear and eye.

Chen Dawai (Wang Leehom), a higher-up in the Chinese military, recognizes the malware used to cause the near-meltdown as containing the same computer code written by Nick Hathaway (Chris Hemsworth), Chen’s old MIT roommate. But Hathaway is serving a 15-year prison sentence for cyber-crimes, so Chen leans on FBI agent Carol Barrett (Davis, even her best not good enough here) and her agency minders to furlough his ex-roomie to help him and Chen’s sister Lien (Tang Wei (Lust, Caution), a network engineer, track down the “blackhat.”

No filmmaker does cops and robbers as well as Michael Mann. And from NSA surveillance to cyber-terrorism, there’s a wealth of zeitgeist behind a search that spans Los Angeles to Hong Kong to Jakarta, with a brief layover in rural Malaysia. The journey also lands Hathaway and Lein in bed through the most cursory of courtships, perhaps prompted by their mutual struggles with American accents.

But the revolving locales and Mann’s aesthetic surfeit smother any space for story and character development. In one scene, Lien dons a white dinner dress, then buys some coffee from a vendor, then pours the coffee on some papers she’s carrying, then takes a long cab ride holding the wet papers out the window to dry. Wondering why she’s doing this quickly becomes to secondary to wondering why we should care.

Giving Mann the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he recognizes the need to deploy every weapon in his auteur’s arsenal to buttress the one-note acting and Morgan Davis Foehl’s second-rate script. But Blackhat is methadone for Michael Mann addicts: it’ll make you feel content for a while, but it’s not like the real thing.

Thor: The Dark World

Ooooh, Imma tell Anikan

Grade: C

Director: Alan Taylor

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman, Tom Hiddleston, Anthony Hopkins, Christopher Eccleston, Idris Elba, Rene Russo, Kat Dennings and Stellan Skarsgard

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr.

The delicate balance between independence and exposition that the current Marvel Cinematic Universe has heretofore mastered flies off the rails in Thor: The Dark World. In many ways, the first Thor outing was the key contributor to the spectacularly popular Marvel’s The Avengers, from one of its heroes to its panoply of foes. The same with probably be the case with Thor 2, with lots of yammer about Aether and Infinity Stones and a convergence of interstellar realms. But, the fish-out-of-water charm of the Thor, the Mighty Avenger (which carried over The Avengers) gets lost in the blur of this special effects-laden hodge podge filtered through a production that includes three credited screenwriters plus multiple reshoots and rewrites.

As Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is polishing off some uprisings that temporarily engulf the Nine Realms, his Earth-bound sweetheart Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) gets sucked into a vortex that puts her face-to-face with an energy force called the Aether. The Aether occupies Jane’s body, prompting Thor to transport her to Asgard for treatment.

Unfortunately, the Aether’s release awakens Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) and his un-merry band of Dark Elves (see also, Romulan lookalikes), bent on capturing the Aether and reviving their ancient war to destroy the universe, starting with Asgard. When Malekith and company come calling, a desperate Thor enlists the aid of his disgraced brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), springing him from a life prison sentence given for the Big Apple mayhem he wrought in The Avengers.

The Asgardian setting smacks of Middle Earth crossed with Naboo—some of Portman’s garb looks like Amidala hand-me-downs.  But mostly, the interdimensional hopscotching is devoid of charm and reason. Problems arise and are solved without any rational explanation outside of Thor’s omnipotent hammer.

As for the supporting characters on Asgard, Idris Elba is still wasted and Anthony Hopkins is cashing a check. Rene Russo gets a couple of good moments, but mostly I found myself staring at Jaimie Alexander for two reason: her beauty and those rumors that she might be cast as Wonder Woman in the next Superman film. Back on Earth, Kat Dennings plays Jane’s gal pal Darcy like just another annoying Broke Girl, while Stellan Skarsgard spends most of his screentime running around with no pants on (seriously).

The lone levity comes compliments of Hiddleston, who is even more at ease in his third go-around as  Loki (his funniest gag incorporates a cameo from Chris Evans). He alone provides any discernable emotional range, and when a superhero movie has you rooting for its treacherous, murderous villain, you know something’s amiss.

Rush

Wait a sec ... didn't you win the Asgard Grand Prix?

Grade: B +

Director: Ron Howard

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Daniel Brühl, Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara

MPAA Rating: R

Running Time: 2 hr. 3 min.

His toys are more sophisticated, his scripts are more polished and his budgets are larger. But even as he pushes 60, Ron Howard is still trying to prove his mettle with a car race movie. Long before he won a Best Director Oscar for A Beautiful Mind (and the one he should have snared for Apollo 13), the 23-year-old Happy Days star was cutting a deal with Roger Corman to direct his own movie for no salary. Howard’s critically maligned first feature was Grand Theft Auto, and 36 years and 20 films later, perhaps he’s trying to settle the score with his latest, Rush.

Howard reteams with his Frost/Nixon scribe Peter Morgan to track the rivalry between British driver James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) and Austrian champion Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), culminating in their epic back-and-forth battle during the 1976 Formula One season.

The film has two main attractions. Meticulous period set design and grainy, ‘70s style cinematography plant the audience firmly the era, which Howard and cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Slumdog Millionaire, Antichrist) supplement with exquisite race camerawork that spins the viewer outside, inside and around the cockpits. Digital effects occasionally lacquer a layer of artificiality on the action. Mostly, however, the blend of reality and F/X is seamless.

But Howard astutely realizes that the racing only accents the human drama. With flaxen locks and rakish charm, Hunt is a talented, daring driver whose main adversary is usually his lack of discipline off the track. On the other hand, Lauda is a wealthy auto design savant who is nicknamed “the Rat” due to his slight overbite and overconfident, even obnoxious personality. (It’s equally off putting that Brühl’s clipped accent sounds like Mike Myers’ Goldmember character from the third Austin Powers film.)

Morgan mostly avoids the loose treatment of facts seen in his previous sports-themed screenplay, The Damned United. Still, Rush implies that the 1976 season was the first time Hunt and Lauda raced each other on the Formula One circuit, which in fact it was their fourth.

The most daring maneuver in Rush isn’t the high octane racing, but instead the way Howard flips the easy classifications of hero and villain. After the cocky Lauda nearly dies in a fiery crash at the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring—a race Lauda wanted to boycott because of unsafe conditions but was outvoted by his fellow drivers, led by Hunt—his improbable return to the cockpit a mere six weeks later elevates the Austrian to a fan and audience favorite. Howard spares few details in detailing Lauda’s grueling recovery; a scene in which he painfully and stubbornly attempts to slide a race helmet over his burned skin is the most daring and uplifting moment of the film.

Howard’s execution isn’t perfect. Some irregular narration adds little beyond distraction, and as the drivers’ significant others, Olivia Wilde and Alexandra Maria Lara are given little purpose beyond being pensive onlookers. But the biggest misstep might be not releasing this adrenaline rush during the summer, when it could have been a surprising bit of high-minded counter-programming, instead of slotting it in early fall, in what the filmmakers imagine must be the pole position for the awards season.

Red Dawn

We're supposed to be looking for Loki, right?

Grade: D +
Director: Dan Bradley
Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Connor Cruise
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hr. 33 min.

One thing I learned watching the remake of Red Dawn is that Bane had an easier time taming Gotham City than the Korean People’s Army does keeping control of Spokane, Wash. Or, maybe that Thor trumps Batman. Either way, this update of the Reagan-era Red Scare flick is silly without the fun, a preposterous script that’s high on xenophobia but low on nuance and common sense.

Fresh back from a tour of duty in Iraq, Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) gets back to his Washington state home just in time to watch little brother Matt (Josh Peck) quarterback the high school “Wolverines” to a loss in the big game. Oh, and to see the North Korean army parachute into town, capturing everyone except the handful of teens that Jed shepherds to safety in the surrounding hills.

Adopting the name of their high school mascot, the Wolverines embark on guerilla warfare, which Jed explicitly and somewhat offensively patterns after the very insurgents he fought back in Iraq. It’s hard to empathize with these freedom fighters when they can so easily saunter around town and even enemy headquarters, picking off Korean interlopers without much threat of reprisal. Of course, the fact that the actual North Korea recently failed to even launch a missile successfully makes their ability to swoop in and occupy the Pacific Northwest appear even more ludicrous, even with the aid of cyberterrorism alluded to during actual news clips of President Obama and others that open the film.

When the Koreans finally do strike back, it is with a knowledge and purpose that suggest the presence of a mole that never comes to fruition. That’s just one of the gaps in this hole-ridden plot. But the biggest problem is that while the 1984 original was at least subversive enough to put fresh-faced Brat Packers in peril, here we get a cast of mostly unknowns, led by an Aussie actor proclaiming, “This is our home.” Still, Hemsworth looks like Olivier next to the rest of the vapid cast, including a perpetually petulant Peck, Tom’s adopted son Connor Cruise, a grousing Jeffrey Dean Morgan and two actresses—Isabel Lucas and Adrianne Palicki—who manage to keep their hair and makeup in check for the Eckert boys even in the middle of a war zone.

Directed by longtime stunt coordinator Dan Bradley, the action scenes carry little resonance beyond shaky-cam urgency. And every time the script flirts with complexity, whether about the town’s coterie of collaborators or the wider reaches of the conflict, it retreats back into a shell of training montages and risible platitudes. There’s an enemy to be fought in Red Dawn: boring movies.

Marvel's The Avengers

Team America: World Police 2

Grade: B +
Director: Joss Whedon
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Renner
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 1 hr. 35 min.

The long-gestating Marvel superhero showcase The Avengers comes saddled with hulking expectations, an ironfisted fan base, and hawkish backers hoping the latest entry in this banner franchise can captain the American movie scene back from recently stark box office tallies.

The looming quandary—beyond the fact that it’s impossible to fashion a pun using Thor—is how to cobble together a satisfying and sensible ensemble film spawned from a quintet of cinematic table setters ranging from good (Iron Man) to middling (Thor, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk) to woeful (Iron Man 2).

Helmed by writer/director and part-time comic book author Joss Whedon, The Avengers manages, against formidable odds, to hit all the right notes. Based on the premise of the very first Avengers comic in 1963, Earth’s mightiest heroes, chaperoned by the cyclopean Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), must join forces to thwart the aims of revenge and world domination by Loki (Tom Hiddleston), the estranged brother of Asgardian demigod Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

Long before a climactic Transformers-style battle royale in which the Avengers must repel an invasion by the Orc-like Chitauri, the true tension is between the superheroes themselves. As a roiling brew of ids and alpha males, these crusaders bicker and bloviate, each of them representative slices of American masculinity: God (Thor), Country (Captain America, again Chris Evans), wealth (Tony Stark/ Iron Man, still Robert Downey Jr.), sex (Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow, filled by Scarlett Johansson’s pouty lips and skintight pants) and testosterone-driven rage (Bruce Banner/ Hulk, now played by Mark Ruffalo and a 20TB server, respectively). Whether the group could defeat Loki isn’t really in doubt; the question is whether they can ever co-exist, much less collaborate in the first place.

Whedon manages to successfully juggle screen time to afford each character their moment in the spotlight. There’s even a nod to the villainous comic book origins of Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) when Loki hijacks the ace archer’s mind for nefarious purposes. Shrewder still is that the script doesn’t take itself so serious, often allowing humor to drive the narrative even more than action. Spearheading that effort, of course, is the indomitable Downey, who is wisely given space to wisecrack—e.g., he calls the full-maned Thor “Point Break” refers to Hawkeye as “Legolas” at one point—and recapture the devil-may-care daredevil from the first Iron Man. Even Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) pops up to rekindle her Nick and Nora-esque repartee with Her Boy Stark.

Action lovers needn’t fret, however, as the film has more than its fair share of computer-generated F/X eye candy to spackle its plot holes and utter lack of depth (passing allusions to forcible interrogation and clean energy feel like they belong in another movie). Titanic tussles between Iron Man and Thor and, later, Thor and The Hulk are the stuff of fanboy dreams. The Dark Knight this isn’t—instead, The Avengers is a superhuman three-ring circus filled acrobatics, wild beasts, clowns and all the popcorn you can munch. Oh, and a Hulk.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at www.indyweek.com