By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Patty Jenkins
Cast: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Connie Nielsen, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Eugene Brave Rock, Elena Anaya and Lucy Davis.
Rating: Excellent.
Patty Jenkins, the visionary director who brought “Monster” in 2003, which Charlize Theron landed her first and only Academy Award brings “Wonder Woman”, a super hero movie that impressed me at all levels.
Based in the comic books by William Moulton Marston the movie tells the story of Diana (Gal Gadot) an Amazonian woman who has been trained all her life to become an unbeatable warrior.
Diana´s life will change one day when she saves Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) an American Spy who informs her about World War I, which is one of the major events that happened in history.
Diana is surprised about this and decides to leave the island to help Trevor, put an end to the war and save the world.
In that time Diana will discover her true identity and knows about her real destiny.
One of the things that made Wonder Woman worked is the screenplay written by Allan Heinberg who has written episodes for shows like Grey´s Anatomy, Gilmore Girls, Sex and The City and many others. This time he made his feature debut and was outstanding.
Heinberg got into huge detail with the character of Wonder Woman and told the real conflicts of the character and of course the naivety of the main character. I also liked the way how he used comedic elements in the movie and the supporting characters that are shown here work at all levels.
Patty Jenkins´directing was outstanding as well and she got into every single detail of the film. The way who she shot the battle sequences, the fighting and the use of CGI was extraordinary and the result speaks for itself.
Jenkins was very smart in both the choices she made in camera and she got very deep in her characters getting the best out of her cast, leading it to very good performances.
Gal Gadot is magnificent as Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. She played her character with realism, heart and we felt for her at all times. The chemistry between Gadot and Chris Pine works at all times and it was so enjoyable watching this two in the screen.
I was losing hope in the DC Comic movies after “The Dark Knight Rises” back in 2012. And I haven´t seen a movie like “The Dark Knight”, which is so far the best adaptation of a DC Comics character film into screen. This one is almost at the same level but it´s outstanding as well.
I love the fact that the villains of this movie were represented in a very unconventional way and it was not the typical psychopath/criminal. It´s represented in another way and this made even more interesting.
Despite of the length of the film that is over two hours, it goes very fast and I hope that the movies of DC Comics go on this direction that it was missing.
It´s admirable that a director like Patty Jenkins was very brave on making a movie of this caliber and this represents the first time a female directs a super hero movie. She did it in an outstanding way and I hope we see this kind of movies again in the future.
“Wonder Woman” is one of the biggest surprises of this summer and I highly recommend it.