Ant-Man review

Ant-Man (12A, 117 mins)
Director: Peyton Reed
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Every successive movie triumph for Marvel becomes a building block for their next enterprise. So the fortunes accrued by Iron Man and the Avengers movies allows them to dip into the vaults for the lesser know Ant-Man, a character who may not be a household name, but who audiences will doubtless come to love in this and future movies.

Back in the day (which was the 1960s when Ant-Man was created, and which is the 80s when we join it here), Ant-Man was the alter ego of Dr Hank Pym. Pym (Michael Douglas) worked for SHIELD on a shrinking formula that he refused to hand over to them, and this gives us a nice chance to imagine what an 80s superhero movie starring Michael Douglas might have looked like.

In the present day we meet Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), just released from prison and doing his best to go straight. He’s a cat burglar and safecracker, although more of a Robin Hood figure than a proper criminal, which is why Pym targets him to be his helper.

Following a series of rather funny tricks and tests which are basically Hank auditioning the unwitting Scott to be the new Ant-Man, Scott ends up in the original shrinking suit. Zapped down to the size of an insect inside the suit, he has super strength and speed, and can communicate with ants to help him on his missions. This ant-eye action is very well realised, creating an entirely believable sense of scale as the tiny Scott interacts with the suddenly terrifyingly huge world around him.

The worst that could be said of Ant-Man is that it’s lightweight and occasionally routine, playing to a formula we’ve seen in many a movie, where a tech is developed which then becomes an application for the military and the chance for some unscrupulous businessman to get rich. In this case Pym’s one-time protégé and now great rival Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) has been working on his own version of the shrinking suit, which is why Scott is being recruited to try to steal it off him.

It doesn’t feel throwaway and, like the similarly glib yet ultimately worthwhile Guardians of the Galaxy, certainly earns its place as a piece in the bigger picture. Specific references to Avengers: Age of Ultron tie us in in lots of ways, old and new, including a great moment when Scott realises the extent of the danger and quips “Why don’t we just call the Avengers?”

The need then is to give it a bit more substance, and Ant-Man is bolstered by a fathers and daughters motif running through it. Pym’s daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly) still blames him for the death of her mother, with the added complication that she works for Cross. Scott meanwhile is estranged from his own young daughter due to his time in prison, with the promise that he can see her again if he helps Hank.

As always, well cast actors feel at home in their new roles, judging the tone just right and providing slick entertainment. The jocular Rudd is a great fit, and having someone of the heft of Douglas to back him up doesn’t hurt, though the veteran star is more than capable of making with the funnies himself.

Perhaps it’s a little sparing with the action, heavy on training montages but taking a long time to get to any set pieces of real scale. But that’s more than made up for with the sense of fun, and when the big sequences do come they're bursting with wit and imagination, the miniature scenario allowing it to go places others simply can’t.

As superhero origin stories go, Ant-Man is a rock solid if hardly perfect effort, and the Marvel machine ensures that these guys will be back, and they’ll be bringing their friends.

Haywire review

Haywire (15/R, 92 mins)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

In a diner in New York state, two people, a man and a woman, chat in a booth. Suddenly it explodes into violence, as the pair grapple for life and death before the woman escapes the restaurant and gets away in a jacked car.

A series of flashbacks fill us in on the covert missions in Barcelona and Dublin that led to the current situation. The woman is Mallory Kane (Gina Carano), a black ops agent, and the man is Aaron (Channing Tatum), who was part of her Barcelona team.

When the spooks higher up the food chain (Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas) get together in a room to discuss them, they're speaking absolute jibber-jabber as far as the audience is concerned. The details of the plot are labyrinthine and barely register, but it matters not a jot because this is director Steven Soderbergh cutting loose and having oodles of kick-ass fun.

Just know it involves the usual betrayal and double cross antics, which leaves Mallory on the run and on a mission to bring down those who set her up.

There are two things that raise Haywire a level above your usual action guff. The first is Carano, a former mixed martial arts fighter. Okay, she’s far from the greatest actress in the world, but her physical performance is hugely impressive. Despite the other big names, she’s unquestionably the star, and watching her lay savage beatings on Tatum, McGregor, Michael Fassbender and countless nameless goons is supremely satisfying.

Secondly, the direction from Soderbergh is just so sharp, so smart, so unlike anything you’re likely to see in a standard action film, that every scene becomes a joy. He brings the cool swagger of Ocean’s Eleven, coupled with his indie aesthetic to bone crunching fights that are brutal and unglamorous yet executed with endlessly dynamic choreography.

As icing on the cake, Douglas is hilarious, Banderas unusually slobby, McGregor a twit, and they're all enjoying themselves immensely, which the viewing audience can’t help but pick up on.

It’s not a million miles away from something Tarantino might rattle out - a marquee cast all taking on smaller roles, probably just for the chance to work with the director, fitting effortlessly into action that’s done in sufficiently different ways that you look on the whole genre afresh.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps review

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (PG-13/12A, 133 mins)
Director: Oliver Stone

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

When we left Gordon Gekko at the end of 1987’s Wall Street, it looked very much like he was on his way to prison for insider trading. Michael Douglas reprises his Oscar winning role as the former superstar corporate raider, and we meet him at the start of this belated sequel just as Gekko is getting out of jail in 2001, penniless and a man out of his time.

Fast forward to 2008 and he’s written a book called ‘Is Greed Good?’, a riff on his most famous line from the original movie, and doing the lecture circuit. Meanwhile on Wall Street, Jake (Shia LaBeouf) is a young analyst living the high life on his huge bonuses with his girlfriend Winnie (Carey Mulligan), who just happens to be Gekko’s daughter.

But as the depth of the bad times hit and shares plummet, Jake’s mentor (Frank Langella) loses a fortune and kills himself when his business is consumed by rivals. Jake goes toe to toe with Josh Brolin’s rival investor whom he blames for Langella’s death, hoping to take him down from the inside, with the aid of some advice from Gekko who hopes to reconcile with Winnie.

Given the monumental financial upheaval of the last couple of years, this seems like the ideal time to revisit these themes. The flash and vulgarity of the 80s is gone, replaced with the subprime excess of the 00s, and the overriding theme is that greed is not good.

Oliver Stone directs at a clip, delivering stunning photography of the New York cityscapes and boardroom scenes that are lit like something out of The Godfather, while clearly having something to say on the issue.

Gekko believes we are all to blame for this but the movie is not really about his comeback as such, nor is it simply a retread of the original with a new protégé in place of Charlie Sheen. It’s more a character study than a thriller but it’s still tremendous fun.

LaBeouf is charismatic though he has a tendency towards mumbling and Douglas is just as good as he was first time round, with an added dose of mischievous humour, plus fine support from a slimy Brolin and a sly cameo from an old friend for fans of the original.