Review

Wonder Woman review: a thrillingly staged knockout blow for feminism

Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman
Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman

Dir: Patty Jenkins; Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Lucy Davis, Ewen Bremner, Saïd Taghmaoui, Danny Huston, Elena Anaya, Robin Wright, Connie Nielsen, David Thewlis. 12A cert, 141 mins.

The main thing many of us have been wondering about Wonder Woman is whether or not Warner Bros was actually planning to release it. For months you could have heard a pin drop on the publicity front: not exactly standard procedure in blockbuster tradecraft.

Perhaps the mere fact of it being a female-led superhero film gave them jitters. Perhaps it had something to do with the abuse meted out to the cast of last year’s all-women Ghostbusters reboot. 

Studios want hits, not causes, and Wonder Woman is a cause in waiting. Of the 55 comic-book films produced by Hollywood in the last decade, zero have been centred on a solo female character: to put that statistic in its fullest perspective, that’s two fewer than have been centred on dogs. Girls in costumes can be one of the boys – one Avenger or X-Man of many – but for an unchaperoned heroine you have to go back to 2005’s Elektra, and no-one should have to do that.

Thankfully now there’s no reason to. Hit or not – and you’d better believe its box-office results will be scrutinised under a microscope – Wonder Woman is close to a knockout on its own ambitious terms. Patty Jenkins’ film officially belongs to the DC Extended Universe, the same sunless and woebegone realm that brought us Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad.

Wonder Woman

But Jenkins – whose only other feature to date is the 2003 Charlize Theron showcase Monster – seems uninterested in cameos and cross-promotion, and devotes every ounce of energy to the story at hand. 

It’s set far from franchise continuity concerns, in the thick of the First World War, during which demigoddess Diana (Gal Gadot) battles her way to the Western Front – where Ares, a horny-headed foe of old, is overdue another thwarting.

Mythic backstories can be an unholy trudge – see Batman v Superman’s pork-chop-headed Gustave Doré allusions for details – but Jenkins parcels up Diana’s in an elegant animated sequence that beguiles you into playing along. She also embraces the unmissably queer slant of the original comic.

Diana’s island home is a strictly women-only utopia – for a sense of the vibe, imagine a shore excursion from a Xena: Warrior Princess theme cruise – and the opening act features all the regal horseback shots of Robin Wright and Connie Nielsen in leather cuirasses and bracers you (possibly) didn’t know you needed. 

Connie Nielsen
Connie Nielsen

Then the blokes show up, like an entire Tour de France’s worth of bicycles for fish. First comes Chris Pine’s US spy Steve Trevor, with an urgent package for Allied high command, then the Imperial German flotilla, keen to ensure at all costs he won’t deliver it. For quickly glossed-over reasons, the ensuing skirmish spurs Diana to accompany Steve to what’s pointedly described, by her mother Hippolyta (Nielsen), as “the world of men”. Masculine collective nouns in a blockbuster have rarely felt so poison-tipped.

Some world it turns out to be – the German army is commanded by Danny Huston, for crying out loud – but Diana proves a match for it. Gadot was unquestionably the best thing in Batman v Superman (never mind that she was in it for seven minutes), and the Israeli actress is endlessly watchable here, with a genuine movie-star aura that recalls Christopher Reeve’s Superman: it’s been a while since a superhero has been an unabashed force for good.

“This is No Man’s Land, Diana,” Steve warns her when they reach the Western Front – words that slyly tee up the film’s defining set-piece, which ends with an impressively Freudian flourish of a once-proud church steeple drooping into dust.

wonder woman

If the action in Wonder Woman comes less frequently than you might expect, it’s also thrillingly designed and staged, with a surging sense of real people, from all sorts of backgrounds, swept up in the wider conflict’s churns and jolts. (Ewen Bremner’s wee, sleekit, cowrin, tim'rous marksman, prowling the trenches in a kilt and glengarry bonnet, is one of many great supporting turns that make a mark.)

As for the golden whip itself – sorry, Lasso of Truth – its bondage overtones remain proudly intact, though the camera is generally more comfortable gawping at Pine than Gadot, whose pin-up status never edges out her standing as a hero to be reckoned with.

In a genre where fanboy entitlement regularly calls the tune, Wonder Woman’s feminism – in its eagerly daubed poster-paint strokes – feels like a rarity. Time will tell whether Hollywood is about to find itself in the thrall of a heroine addiction. But as the credits rolled, I was already craving another hit.

Wonder Woman is released on June 1

 

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