Wonder Woman Review

The reason it worked is that it is not embarrassed. Diana believes people are worth saving, says so out loud, and the film never sets up a joke at her expense; Gal Gadot plays that conviction straight and it turns out that straight is exactly what the genre had been starving for. Chris Pine is doing generous, unshowy work as a man who knows he is the second lead. The trench crossing is the payoff of every choice, a slow walk into machine gun fire scored to a single cello line, and it works because Jenkins holds the shot long enough for the impossibility to register.

Themyscira is shot in warm Mediterranean light, London in grey, and the contrast does more character work than dialogue does. Where it falters is where all of these falter. David Thewlis becomes a floating electric figure in a smoke cloud for a third act that abandons the film's own argument about human complicity, Danny Huston's German general is a cartoon, and the gas subplot never becomes a real threat. The first ninety minutes are close to perfect.