MOVIE REVIEW: Snakebit DC superhero studio finally turns out winner with fun, dazzling, droll 'Wonder Woman'

As old hands now with the genre, we've come to expect a fair amount of predictable spectacle with our summer comic book movies: origin stories filled with symbolic strife; pasty character development; big, dumb fights splayed out in overwrought CGI; useless villains; inane plots -- you get the idea.

When done right, however, they can still be riotously entertaining, and when they're done exceptionally well, they can be something a good deal more: genuinely stirring.

For such a film to come out of the beleaguered Warner Bros. DC studios -- the fine folks who previously ruined Superman (Man of Steel), gave us "Batffleck", (Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with Ben Affleck) blew Suicide Squad, and haven't been able to open a film that wasn't dour and dull in years -- seems especially extraordinary, but Patty Jenkins, whose best-known work before this was the Charlize Theron female serial killer flick Monster, working from a surprisingly deft script from Allan Heinberg, has gone and given us a Wonder Woman with a lot more than WW's bulletproof forearm bracelets on its sleeve.

We meet young Diana (Lilly Aspell) on the hidden isle of Themyscira, an outpost of Amazon women created by Zeus after the betrayal of Ares left the rest of the gods dead, and Zeus at the end of his powers. The Amazons were originally tasked with leading men toward a more harmonious civilization, only now, they remain hidden from the outside world in order to protect what's left of their idyllic community.

Over time, trained to be their greatest warrior by Antiope (Robin Wright), fully grown Diana (Gal Gadot) isn't at all sure of her destiny until she saves Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), an American spy working for Britain during WWI, after his German getaway plane crashes into the water near the hidden island. Inspired by his talk of the immensity of the war, an event Diana is thoroughly convinced was caused by the crafty Ares, she leaves home and her saddened Queen mother Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) in order to kill him, and she hopes, end the conflict.

Returning to London, Diana and Steve, with financial and logistical support from Sir Patrick (David Thewlis), a high-ranking British military envoy, eventually formulate a dangerous plan to infiltrate enemy lines in Belgium in order to stop a crusading German commander, Ludendorff (Danny Huston), and his redoubtable chemist, dubbed "Dr. Poison" (Elena Anaya), even as the Kaiser is apparently mere days away from signing an armistice. Joined by Steve's ragtag group of scalawags, including a smooth-talking huckster (Said Taghmaoui), an American Indian tracker (Eugene Brave Rock) and a besotted Scottish marksman (Ewan Bremner), the team make their way through No Man's Land in order to stop Ludendorff, whom Diana is convinced is Ares himself in disguise.

Naturally, along the way, there is a budding romance between Steve and Diana, but the film takes great pains to present Diana as her own fierce guardian. When she decides to cross particularly treacherous territory and assault German trenches in order to free a nearby German-occupied town, it is she who leads the way and draws the considerable firepower of the German troops, and she who eradicates the German occupation nearly single-handedly. In this film, the good-looking man ("I'm ... above average," Steve tells her shortly after they first meet) mostly serves as the hood ornament to her courageous, indomitable heroism.

Welcome feminist overtures aside, however, the film has a great deal more to offer, even excusing the somewhat inconsistent CGI effects (one pointed criticism is that the film still slips a bit too easily into the kind of twisty, physics-busting, slow-motion action sequences with which head DC visionary hack Zack Snyder has ruined virtually all his own directorial efforts), and that is mainly due to Gadot.

Much like her accent (which turns out to be Israeli), at first it's hard to place exactly what makes her such an effective heroine. To be frank, there are moments of emotional extremism she doesn't quite pull off, but there's no denying her force of personality and spirit, which infuses the character, along with the entire film, with a heightened sense of gravitas. She was easily the best thing in Snyder's dreadful Batman v. Superman debacle, and she proves here that her on-screen charisma is no mirage.

For a studio that has taken massive critical hits from its recent previous comic-book incarnations, we have to give DC credit for finally taking a film out of Snyder's clutches (but never fear, he's the mastermind behind the forthcoming Justice League extravaganza due out later this year), handing the reins instead to a female director with precious little previous experience in blockbuster-making, and casting their lead so adroitly.

It's clear the producers were all too aware of their real meal ticket on this one, even going so far as to match Gadot's natural Israeli accent with the other Amazons so as to create a regional dialect based on her pronunciation of English, but they were right to build the film around her. In superhero flicks, casting is half the battle -- see Downey Jr., Robert; and Evans, Chris; over at Marvel -- and for once the DC team nailed it.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the film also offers a sober love story, one that factors tremendously into the fiery climax of the film in ways surprisingly complex, if not exactly subtle.

That still doesn't quite fully explain the film's ability to stir up the senses, more than once raising the hairs on the back of my neck. Take one moment, for example, near the film's crescendo action sequence at the end, as Diana approaches Ludendorff for a final showdown in a watchtower next to his German compound. "What are you?" the commandant hisses at her after she makes a fiery entrance.

"You'll soon find out," she coolly responds with an irrepressible smirk and a delicious spin of her sword as she advances toward him.

It's a small gesture, but it speaks volumes to the character's particular brand of swagger. She's noble, caring, often struck by the beauty of things, but she's also a born warrior and anything but demure about it: Something that stuck from her first appearance with Superman and Batman last year was her actual enjoyment of being physically challenged. In another scene from this film, Diana has to leap across a giant chasm to reach a special tower in Themyscira. Hanging perilously by one hand off a small, jutting brick, a dizzying height beneath her dangling feet, the smile on her face betrays just how little such dangers give her pause. She's not invulnerable like Superman, she is subject to pain and suffering and death as any other mortal; she just doesn't care; and with this galvanizing performance, she might well have saved a movie studio from its own dangerous precipice.

MovieStyle on 06/02/2017