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Limitless flight has always been Superman’s greatest attribute (launching a catchphrase that still comes to mind when looking up at a bird or a plane), and its visualization has warranted the hero’s frequent revival in popular culture, his faster-than-a-bullet abilities rendered with more and more realism as technology advances.
And so it is that the red-caped do-gooder looks great as he defies gravity in “Man of Steel,” taking the audience with him as he shreds through clouds with image-blurring velocity, and rockets above the stratosphere to gaze down at Earth, the place he now calls home.
That familiar, vicarious thrill is as potent as ever in Zack Snyder’s hulking blockbuster, an origin-story take on the world’s foremost comic-book freedom fighter, but it’s one of few things to praise about an altogether needless film. Starring dashing Henry Cavill as the titular icon (and co-starring Amy Adams as Lois Lane), “Man of Steel” manages, for roughly the first half of its bloated 143 minutes, to be both consistently engaging and consistently banal — a polished movie that entertains, but feels about as fresh as a dusty DC comic.
Today’s glut of superhero flicks can’t be blamed for “Man of Steel’s” failings, for the problem isn’t that it’s one among many, but that it does next to nothing to stand out in the crowd. In style and story, the film tries for a “Batman Begins” approach (surely thanks in part to producer Christopher Nolan), and in every other way, it follows the trajectory of any number of caped-crusader adventures, culminating, of course, with the hopelessly redundant, blaring destruction of a metropolis (in this case, Metropolis).
Beyond the drawback that “Man of Steel” isn’t about anything real or provocative (apart from a patriotism that was oodles more appealing when 2006’s “Superman Returns” debuted), its last act is one of 2013’s worst big-screen punishments, a tedious CGI-scuffle between Superman and Kryptonian baddie Zod (Michael Shannon) that ends with an anticlimactic comeuppance. “That could have happened an hour ago,” scoffed the man sitting behind me. Amen, brother.
Man of Steel
PG
One-and-a-half reels out of four
Now playing at area theaters
Recommended Rental
NO
R
Available Tuesday
An Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, this uncommonly beautiful Spanish-language gem tells the true story 1988’s Chilean national plebiscite, and the underdog “No” campaign that ultimately ended Augusto Pinochet’s reign. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, the movie, directed Pablo Larraín, was shot on U-Matic video, creating a seamless, artful merge of archival and newly-shot footage.
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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