Amazing Amazon

The DC Universe gets the blast of fun it sorely needed with Wonder Woman, a film that gets it right on almost every front, and features a performance from Gal Gadot that makes it seem the role was her birthright.

Gadot lights up the screen and commands the camera on a level with Christopher Reeve and Robert Downey, Jr., in past films of the superhero genre. She simply is Wonder Woman to the extent that I can’t picture another actress ever even attempting to play the character again. She owns it. It’s hers. Game over.

There’s always that faction of fans who bitch about superhero genre stories, wanting these films to jump straight to the hardcore action, but I love a good superhero genre story done well, and this is one of them.

The movie starts with young Amazonian princess Diana running around in her island paradise, practicing her fight moves and yearning to be trained as a warrior. After butting heads with her sister Antiope (Robin Wright, rightfully cast as an Amazonian badass), Diana’s mother, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen, yet another piece of great casting) relents, and allows Antiope to train Diana, as long as she doesn’t tell her about the true powers she possesses.

For those who don’t know the Wonder Woman back story—I was a little rusty on it myself—it’s a sweet little piece of mythology and mystery, and director Patty Jenkins (the Charlize Theron Oscar vehicle Monster) perfectly paces all the revelations.

Diana eventually winds up in Europe during World War I along with Steve Trevor (Chris Pine), a wartime spy who crash lands on her island. Diana is convinced that the German military leader (Danny Huston) Steve is fighting is the war god Ares, and she intends to take him out. This all leads to miraculously cool scenes of Wonder Woman leading soldiers on the battlefield against the Germans, and it’s nothing short of exhilarating every time she springs into action.

Gadot has the best superhero smile since Reeve flashed his pearly whites in the original Superman (1978). When Reeve smiled, he just drove home the fact that he was Superman for the two hours you were watching him, that being the sweetest, best darned guy running around on planet Earth. (You know, back when Superman was generally happy rather than moping about.) Gadot has that same kind of smile superpower.

It says a lot that Gadot and Jenkins make you feel good in a movie that has its share of violence and villainy in it. Huston is a super creep, very much against type, and he and his evil sidekick, Dr. Maru (Elena Anaya), comprise the film’s main bad guys. Dr. Maru likes making poisonous gas, and there are moments involving her evildoings that qualify as terrifying. Yet, no matter how dark the film gets, it remains an overall upbeat experience.

I will cite it for some occasionally terrible CGI special effects, although there are enough stellar effects to balance things out. Still, maybe this movie needed a few more months to bake in post-production because the shoddy moments are glaringly obvious. They don’t come close to spoiling the movie, but they help it fall short of excellent.

In addition to Gadot, Pine is a total charmer as the confused spy who winds up romancing a goddess, a love story handled in a way that qualifies as surprisingly convincing and adorable. Gadot and Pine make for one of the year’s winningest screen couples.

Perhaps some of the joy in this movie will make it into November’s Justice League, or future Superman movies. (Hey, Batman can mope … that’s his lot in life.) Wonder Woman gives the DC superhero crew a new lease on life, and gives the summer movie season the adrenaline boost it needed after the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie stunk up the place.

After all these years, and all of those failed attempts, Wonder Woman finally gets her chance to rule on the silver screen. Gadot takes that chance and soars with the movie gods and goddesses. May she have many more adventures as fun as this one.