Thunderbolts* can be messy. Not just the movie, with its clumsily forced narrative beats and whiplash tonal shifts. But also, its title characters, the broken and lonely souls who ditch the colourful costumes and wear their emotions on their sleeves, as if it’s their brand.
These reluctant heroes, led by Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, the troubled sister to Scarlett Johansson’s late Black Widow, are defined by how much they need therapy. They wrestle with themselves more than the bad guys, in a way that’s more pronounced than the most unstable among Marvel’s stable of wisecracking world saviors. They’re endearingly vulnerable, at times devastatingly so, and yet still fun and exciting enough to save Marvel.
