Ivan Radford | On 20, Jul 2025

Director: Jake Schreier
Cast: Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Certificate: 12

“The past doesn’t go away. So you can either live with it for ever, or do something about it.” Those are the words of Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), aka the Winter Soldier, the antihero with a cybernetic arm and a golden heart who has been in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since almost its first frames. He’s talking to Yelena (Florence Pugh), the adoptive sister of Black Widow who was also trained as an assassin. Both have red on their ledger – although Bucky has had the Avengers to help pull him forward in his own recovery journey. That difference is key to the success of Thunderbolts*, a blast of fresh air in the superhero genre.
The film comes after Marvel’s own long line of mistakes, as it attempted to assemble a web of films and TV shows so interconnected that keeping up felt like homework. Thunderbolts* is something of a reset, marking the most satisfying high point on the big screen since Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or perhaps even Avengers: Infinity War. The former recaptured the standalone energy of the very first MCU outings, which featured B-tier characters who grew to become fan favourites. The latter tied all those supporting heroes into their formidable unit.
Written by Black Widow’s Eric Pearson and The Bear’s Joanna Calo, this entertaining outing sits somewhere between the two, as it brings together a ragtag bunch of scrappy outcasts to form something bigger – their name, as the asterisk playfully indicates, is just one of the many things they bicker about.
The group includes Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), the villain of Ant-Man and the Wasp, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the toxic and now-disgraced temporary Captain America replacement from The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), aka Red Guardian, Russia’s attempted answer to Captain America and a father figure to Yelena, who appeared in Black Widow and now scrapes a living as a limo driver.
They collide because they’ve all been doing dirty work for CIA boss Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), covering up of her own super-soldier experiments – and, inevitably, are assigned to take each other out as one final wiping up of evidence. When Alexei finds out, he and his limo charge into the fray to save Yelena.
The resulting chaos is wonderfully messy, not least because the characters are all something of a mess themselves. They’re all broken and lonely, seeking belonging, friendship, redemption and hope – and that common thread makes them an emotionally vulnerable and relatable ensemble (unlike most MCU teams) and simultaneously releases them from the baggage of their own backstories, although not without a bit of inner wrangling first.
Caught in the crossfire of trauma and regret is Bob (Lewis Pullman), an amnesiac found in Valentina’s lab who goes on to be heart of the whole movie. Played with a raw openness by Lewis Pullman, he serves as both ambiguous intrigue and comic relief, but also a grounded lens through which to magnify everyone else’s shame and guilt.
The rest of the cast respond accordingly, with Wyatt Russell leaning into John’s grizzled, arrogant toxicity, and Sebastian Stan commendably finding fresh notes to play in Bucky’s repertoire, as he tries to be a straight-laced Congressman but ends up jaded by the system. David Harbour is clearly having a ball as the larger-than-life Red Soldier, and he brings a poignant affection to his relationship with Yelena. Florence Pugh, though, is the undoubted standout and star of the whole affair, elevating every moment with a charismatic turn that’s both forthright and honest – one moment, contemplating the void inside her, the next casually strolling through an acrobatic set piece.
The fact that none of these sidebar supes have truly powerful superpowers is all part of the charm, but director Jake Schreier – who helmed the delightful Robot & Frank – crafts action sequences that more than deliver on the spectacle front, right from the dizzying opening shot to a deft use of overhead vignettes. Crucially, though, he balances those with inventive and often jaw-dropping montages of internal turmoil, borrowing from the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Chronicle and Everything Everywhere All at Once playbooks to produce a strikingly original exploration of the shadows and skeletons in his antiheroes’ closets – and a celebration of finding value and acceptance in connecting with others.
Amid it all, Geraldine Viswanathan – who is fast becoming one of the most exciting young performers around, after Blockers, Hala and You’re Cordially Invited – steals several scenes as Valentina’s amusingly naive assistant realising that doing good in the world isn’t as easy as you might think. And that lesson reinforces the tightly plotted arc that gives Thunderbolts* more focus than any Marvel project in recent memory. This is the MCU at its most personal and moving – and, for the first time in a long time, leaves you excitedly facing forward to the future, instead of being distracted by the franchise’s rear view mirror.

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