Man Of Steel Review

Director: Zack Snyder

Starring: Henry Cavill, Russell Crowe, Diane Lane, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne, Kevin Costner, Michael Shannon, Antje Traue, Christopher Meloni.

Certificate: 12A

Running Time: 143 minutes

Synopsis: A young boy learns that he has extraordinary powers and is not of this Earth. As a young man, he journeys to discover where he came from and what he was sent here to do. But the hero in him must emerge if he is to save the world from annihilation and become the symbol of hope for all mankind.

With the massive critical and commercial success of pretty much every Marvel movie released in the past three or four years, and Christopher Nolan hitting a home run with his three Batman movies for DC and Warner Brothers, director Zack Snyder had to really knock it out of the park with MAN OF STEEL. Here, the director of SUCKER PUNCH, 300 and the pretty decent DAWN OF THE DEAD remake, has assembled a team of acting talent and back room crew more than able to step up to the plate and give it their best shot in this, the Superman movie for a post-DARK KNIGHT audience.

MAN OF STEEL is another origin story, but before you run for the hills screaming, the story creators and screenwriters in David S. Goyer, Chris Nolan and Snyder himself, have come up with something very different, and rather than have story told from the moment Kal-El is blasted from Krypton, to landing on Earth and being found by the Kent family, high-school in Smallville, through to leaving the Kent home and arriving at the Daily Planet in Metropolis, we get something pleasingly different indeed, and the film is all of the better for it.

The story here revolves around the brutal fall of Krypton and focuses more on Russell Crowe’s Jor-El character, who is excellent here filling the shoes of screen legend Marlon Brando in as equally an iconic role to Supes himself, as he manages to send one of their own away from the failing planet to Earth before General Zod (a menacing, excellent Michael Shannon) get his hands on him. On Earth, the story targets the struggle of a man trying to fit in with humanity and not reveal his secret, his very big secret; his ability and want to help others.

The film is full of big, epic Snyder CGI spectacle and is about as far away from the grounded reality of Nolan’s holy Batman trilogy as you can possibly get. That’s not to say its difficult to see Nolan’s influence, as it is also true that the heart of the film, and indeed the more enjoyable elements are not the massive special effects sequences, but the scenes observed within the two families, both on Earth and during the opening, spectacular scenes on Krypton, and particularly with Kal-El/ Clark’s two influential fathers. If anything, I could have done with more of this and less of the one hour plus action onslaught as Zod finally discovers the whereabouts of Krypton’s last son halfway in.

Snyder has somehow managed to deliver an out of this world epic adventure, both grounded and believable in the world in which we exist, through wonderfully written human characters and superb performances from all of the cast while at the same time not compromising the heart of the Superman legend.

Cavill is a worthy Superman for our time and is perfectly cast in quite simply the best Man Of Steel movie since Donner’s classic nearly 35 years ago and surely the best comic book movie of the year so far.

You can also catch our Red (& blue) Carpet premiere report HERE.