Film Review: Man of Steel

Man of Steel. Rated M (science fiction violence). 143 minutes. Directed by Zack Snyder. Screenplay by David S Goyer.

Verdict: A potentially great film inexplicably loses its way and collapses into chaos.

There’s a defining moment in this fantastic, frenetic, but ultimately flawed telling of the Superman legend. Our hero Kal-El, played to furrowed-brow perfection by British Adonis Henry Cavill, is preparing to destroy the meglomaniacal General Zod’s (Michael Shannon) ‘world engine’ – a machine that is transforming the earth’s atmosphere into one that will no longer be inhabitable by humans. Having wrestled himself free of a shape-shifting metallic monstrosity, Superman summons all of his power and soars into the heart of the machine – powered there by an astonishing climax to Hans Zimmer’s (Inception, The Dark Knight, Sherlock Holmes) score – in an effort to restore balance to the planet. It is comic book perfection.

Snyder’s (Sucker Punch, Legend of the Guardians, Watchmen, 300) and Goyer’s work is undeniably at its best in the first two thirds of the film, and particularly the first act – where the self-destructing Krypton is superbly realised. Presided over by a fine, urgent and stately performance from Russell Crowe as Kal’El’s father Jor-El, the origins of the infant’s dispatch to Earth establish the conflict (that eventually grinds the remainder of the film into the ground) with an epic sense of a child’s (and a race’s) destiny.

The charting of young Clark’s journey to adulthood is equally involving, with an anti-narrative structure that takes us both forwards and backwards beautifully as the young man’s backstory is fleshed out. The scenes between Dylan Sprayberry’s anxiety-stricken 13-year-old Clark and Kevin Costner’s Jonathon Kent are deeply moving, while Diane Lane’s performance as the long-suffering, heroic Martha Kent is the best of the film.

The care the filmmakers have taken to establish a deeply heartfelt engagement with the story’s lead characters, makes its eventual collapse into chaotic, overly destructive, 9/11 exploitation simply impossible to justify. And, unforgivably, that sensation you will feel as Clark and Lois (a fine Amy Adams) kiss amongst the ruins of New York (sorry, Metropolis), is something like absolute bewilderment as to how something so right could have gone so horribly wrong.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.