Review: Man of Steel - Montreal Gazette

Man of Steel

Rating: 3 stars

Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon

Directed by: Zack Snyder

Running time: 143 minutes

Parental guidance: Violence, coarse language

Playing at: Angrignon, Banque Scotia, Brossard, Cavendish, Cin?ma Carnaval, Colossus, C?te des Neiges, Kirkland, Lacordaire, March? Central, March? Central (Imax), Sources, Sph?retech, Taschereau cinemas

Playing in 3D at: Angrignon, Banque Scotia, Banque Scotia (Imax), Cavendish, Cin?ma Carnaval, Colossus, C?te des Neiges, Deux Montagnes, Kirkland, Lacordaire, LaSalle, March? Central, March? Central (Imax), Sources, Sph?retech, StarCit?, Taschereau, Taschereau (Imax) cinemas

Once upon a time, Superman was the cheeriest of superheroes, a clean-cut do-gooder with a clean-cut conscience. That was back when you could believe truth, justice and the American way were not only possible, they were synonymous.

Now there's a new Superman for a new world: darker, anguished, beset by the responsibilities of his great powers. In Man of Steel, the reboot of the Superman franchise, he's not exactly a bulletproof Batman, but he's torn between loyalties to his native planet and the strange Earthlings who torment him here.

It starts on the planet Krypton, a dark place of spaceships and flying monsters that is about to be destroyed because it has greedily mined the energy in its own core, a sort of intergalactic anti-fracking message. Top scientist Jor-El (Russell Crowe) puts his newborn baby Kal-El in a rocket ship and sends him to safety on Earth, a step ahead of the evil General Zod (Michael Shannon), who is against babies or something.

Then Jor-El is killed and Zod is banished from the planet. However, both will return later in the movie - and at these prices, they'd better.

We next see the boy - now called Clark Kent - as a bearded seaman who must rescue workers on an exploding ocean oil rig. He has grown up to be Henry Cavill, an absurdly bemuscled British actor who moreover has the most bankable dimple since Kirk Douglas. Clark is moving from town to town, or rather from disaster to disaster, disappearing after his heroic feats to remain anonymous. This isn't easy because, in moments of high stress, laser beams come out of his eyes.

Nevertheless, as we learn in one of several flashbacks, his adoptive Earth father, Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner), has told him he must keep his superpowers a secret. "When the world finds out what you can do, it's going to change everything," he says.

It's an intriguing notion, developed by director Zack Snyder, a veteran of this kind of 3D abs-over-matter legend-making (300, Watchmen) in the picture's more grounded first half.

The Superman story has always served as a sort of Christian parable, the tale of an only son sent to the world to save mankind, and Man of Steel underlines the notion: "They'll kill him," his mother says as they prepare the infant to go to Earth. "He'll be a god to them," his father says.

Jonathan's concern adds a note of ontological interest, creating a more realistic approach: Learning there's a flying alien in our midst could alter our understanding of the universe. However, in the end, when the world does learn of the man of steel, it doesn't seem to make much difference. Everyone just accepts him as a saviour in a red cape. As often happens in big-budget Hollywood films, the philosophical danger turns out to have been exaggerated.

Of course, by then everyone has been battered senseless by the never-ending final hour of Man of Steel, a battle on land, sea and air among flying creatures, U.S. Air Force bombers, long metallic tentacles that come from a spaceship that looks like a flying clam, and the sadly inevitable trope of airplanes flying into buildings, sending glass and concrete tumbling.

Snyder seems more interested in the spectacle of the thing. It lacks any sense of tragedy that you might expect from such a conflicted hero in a post-9/11 world.

Man of Steel is a huge production, and the money is splashed across the screen in endless special effects and lots of action. What are missing are the moments of surprise and humour: the joys of seeing the superhero making everyday magic. Cavill is an appealing hunk, but there's no joy in his feats. Anyone can throw spaceships around. Superman needs to come down to earth and cheer up a bit.

Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Review+Steel/8523705/story.html

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