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Thunderbolts* -- a review

I first saw actress Florence Pugh as part of an unplanned double feature with the movies Fighting With My Family and Malevolent. Fighting was a biography based on the life of British-born wrestler Saraya Bevis, better known as Paige in the ring. Malevolent was a horror movie about a brother and sister team of con artists who pretend to be ghost hunters so they can bilk their clients--until they run into some real life terrors. Both movies were very good, and I was really impressed with how completely different Pugh was from one film to the next.

And so I followed her career, which wasn’t hard to do, seeing how Pugh kept popping up in just about everything since then, including Dune: Part Two, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Pugh debuted in the MCU as Yelena Belova, the little sister of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) in the enjoyable Black Widow. Pugh also reprised Yelena later that year in the shitty Disney+ series Hawkeye (Pugh imbued her scenes with some much-needed vitality in that otherwise lackluster show). Pugh is back as Yelena in Thunderbolts*, which has become my favorite MCU film of 2025 so far (I haven’t seen Fantastic Four yet).

When we first meet Yelena in Thunderbolts*, it’s in James Bond fashion, right in the middle of a mission for Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), her handler and overall boss. When Yelena expresses a desire for change, hoping to do more superheroic, “forward facing” missions like how her now-deceased sister did, Valentina sends her on one more shadowy spy assignment, which turns out to be a trap for Yelena and the other operatives. Valentina, facing a congressional inquiry into her shady dealings, sends an unknowing Yelena and the other operatives into a massive incinerator that's designed to burn away all evidence of them and their very existence.

But instead of dying, Yelena teams up with the other operatives, which include Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) from Ant Man and the Wasp, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and…Bob (Lewis Pullman), a guy in pajamas with a bad case of amnesia. Thunderbolts* is not only a great deal of fun, but it’s damned funny, too--sometimes hysterically so (“Cucumber! CUCUMBER!”). When David Harbour and Sebastian Stan show up as Red Guardian and Winter Soldier, respectively, we begin to see an origin film about a superhero team, sort of.

Director Jake Schreier revels in pulling the rug out from under the viewer, who’s expecting the usual superhero tropes here, but gets some pretty ingenious twists and turns instead. And Thunderbolts* is all the better for it. While the heroes who form the Thunderbolts eventually step up and fight for humanity, it’s made very clear that they are not the A-Team; they’re a collection of C-listers who are simply trying the best they can, despite their flaws. This complexity of humor and drama is what makes Thunderbolts* a far better film than anything the MCU has fielded in theaters or on D+ recently.

I admit that I only saw this movie because Florence Pugh was in it, and while I enjoyed her superb performance here, I wound up really enjoying Thunderbolts*, the whole film, a great deal. The low quality of the more recent Marvel projects have made watching these movies and TV shows about as much fun as doing homework. But Thunderbolts* has brought back the fun--along with a healthy blast of wry humor--and I’m hoping that this engaging film marks a return to the long-lost glory days of the MCU.--SF

Thunderbolts* will be on Disney+ shortly, but it's available on physical media right now.

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