fter the death of her sister, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) finds herself facing waves of melancholy and loneliness. Attempting to distract from the void, the mercenary joylessly executes a series of clandestine missions for unethical CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus). During a brief reconnection with her father, the Red Guardian (David Harbour), Yelena decides that a more honorable and public-facing role as a defender against evil would rekindle her passions for crime-fighting and make better use of her lethal talents. But Valentina has other plans, instead tricking the assassin into an encounter with similarly-skilled killers Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) in an underground bunker, full of secrets awaiting incineration by the O.X.E. Group.

Although it’s intentional, the start is rough. It’s not particularly engaging when the leading lady is bored, disinterested, and unhappy as she goes through the routines of conducting covert black-ops assignments, which then appear as bland, uninspired fight sequences. It also doesn’t help that once additional roles are introduced, it becomes apparent that everyone here is recycled from previous projects, requiring a considerable amount of knowledge on origins and backstories – and not just the movies, but also the television series. Of course, it’s telling that even for those who don’t remember the circuitous plots and the complicated ways in which all of these individuals are related, the story is impacted only marginally; it just doesn’t matter much how these characters came to know one another.

“We have no reliable heroes.” Borrowing the basic concept from “The Incredibles,” wherein superheroes have become too destructive and costly to be running amok, unchecked by financial and political forces, “Thunderbolts*” (with a very specific asterisk, whose necessity will be revealed only at the very end) delves into a setup of governmental corruption and attempts to get rid of ongoing, top-secret superhero projects. As it winds its way toward a tale unusually similar to the X-Men franchise, dealing with mutations that grant super powers and the ways in which they can’t be contained or controlled by authoritarian overseers, it first stops to dabble in standard melees and sieges and other armed confrontations that exhaustingly reveal the humdrum repetition of prior infertile showdowns: everyone is inexplicably impervious to harm. Though many of these warriors aren’t actually superhuman, they’re nevertheless practically invincible, immune to physical violence and undoubtedly faster than bullets. No damage is ever sustained, other than a scratch or two, which has minimal effect on makeup and hairstyling. Computer-generated masks, armor, weaponry, and similar components are correspondingly unconvincing. But beyond the failure of the visuals to look realistic, it’s difficult to feel tension when no one is in believable danger.

The beginning of “Thunderbolts*” is essentially Marvel’s latest version of “The Suicide Squad,” which itself was a thinly veiled “Avengers” type of assemblage, hiding behind the flimsy notion that the leads were antiheroes – despite never doing anything truly despicable. As a result, they can bicker, quarrel amongst themselves, and lightly curse as they manage comical teamwork of the exceptionally formulaic variety. And then they can join forces to combat tyranny and a new supervillain, whose arrival elicits countless surprised visages and comments, as if they somehow forgot they’ve all lived through more than one space-alien invasion. At least there’s one decent chase sequence and an emotional heart-to-heart between father and daughter.

As the film transitions into an allegory for battling inner demons and coping with depression (brought about from painful memories and physical/psychological abuses) – ideas that are often more amusing than the commonplace superhero patterns – it drops most of the adventure in order to embrace the notions of cooperation and a support system (and demonstrations of how unscrupulous people lose control of increasing autonomy). That’s probably for the better, considering that – yet again – abilities are so poorly defined in the world of Marvel’s entities. No one here has specific superpowers, instead enjoying general strength, speed, agility, and coordination that far exceed normal human capabilities. Unlike with the Fantastic Four, there’s no sense of each persona contributing an essential skill (or piece to a puzzle, like in “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen”); any member of this ragtag group can pretty much save the day at any given moment. By the end, “Thunderbolts*” is entertaining in all the usual ways, but can’t quite muster an identity of its own, or a novel approach that could make it stand out from the rest – despite the fact that this B-team of superheroes is comprised of some A-list character actors, who elevate the sincerity of the interactions even if they can’t rescue the plot.

– The Massie Twins