Wonder Woman

Our Review

For a stretch in the middle, Wonder Woman is the best film DC produced in its entire connected universe era. Gal Gadot and Chris Pine carry a charming stranger abroad story to the front lines of World War I, the chemistry is real, and the No Man’s Land sequence, where Diana climbs out of the trench and walks into machine gun fire, remains one of the great superhero scenes ever filmed. It is stirring in a way few of these movies manage, and Patty Jenkins stages it with total confidence.

The problems arrive with the ending. The film spends two hours arguing that war is a human disease, then caves in and gives Diana a literal glowing devil to punch, wasting David Thewlis in a pile of underlit effects. The final brawl is noisy and generic and it nearly sinks everything before it.

But the journey there, from Themyscira’s sunlit training grounds to the mud of Belgium, is so good the movie survives its own climax. Gadot’s warmth and sincerity carry the whole enterprise, and the film deserved every dollar of its massive success. Our score: 7/10. A genuinely great time that trips right at the finish line.