Film Review of the Week

Action

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (12A)

Review: With great responsibility comes great sadness and aching regret. Tom Holland’s fourth headline foray as New York’s friendly neighbourhood webslinger begins with a special effects-laden bang and ends with a whimper of anguish. That narrative trajectory feels right for a tortured hero, who has given up everything to protect the people he loves. War on Earth-616 in the sprawling Marvel Comics multiverse demands sacrifices and for this iteration of Spider-Man, self-destruction spreads like black mould in the heartbreaking absence of family and friendship.

Thanks to the spellcasting of Doctor Strange, the world has forgotten Peter Parker (Tom Holland) leads a secret double life. Sweetheart Michelle Jones aka MJ (Zendaya) and best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) no longer have cherished memories of their time with Peter and the lonely crimefighter struggles to maintain emotional distance from the pair. As he forges ahead on his own, Peter undergoes a dramatic transformation because of his mutating human-arachnid DNA. He seeks to suppress an emerging dark side with guidance from Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) just as a powerful threat manifests in the Big Apple and manipulates mechanised menace Scorpion (Michael Mando). Only Peter can sense the insidious presence and repel sustained efforts to access his memories.

The source of the malevolence threatens to harm MJ and Peter joins forces with grizzled vigilante Frank Castle aka Punisher (Jon Bernthal) to protect her. Fearful he is becoming a monster, Peter openly shares his fears with MJ but she only sees “a really good guy who might just be changing”.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is an exhilarating next chapter of Peter Parker’s evolution and the most emotionally rich and satisfying tour of Holland’s spandex-clad duty to date. In the five years since Spider-Man: No Way Home became the highest grossing instalment of the franchise, the actor has spent countless months surfing online forums to understand what the fandom wants. He fed that intelligence back to returning screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. They deliver a lean, muscular rites-of-passage story punctuated by bombastic action set pieces that pays unabashed fan service and overtly tees up a cataclysmic superhero showdown in Avengers: Doomsday in December.

A spectacular supporting performance from Sadie Sink complements Holland’s gut-punching work. He rips out his character’s heart in several scenes and sparks a delightfully profane double-act with Bernthal’s brute. Thanks to slippery plot machinations, Zendaya inhabits multiple facets of MJ while Batalon is underused but adds welcome comic relief.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton proves that his work behind the camera of the consistently thrilling Marvel Comics origin story Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings was no fluke. An outlandish action sequence with a runaway armoured vehicle shot on the streets of Glasgow (standing in for New York) doesn’t disappoint and the gravity-defying showdown between Spider-Man and ninja crime syndicate The Hand is an eye-popping feast of flashing blades, acrobatics and throwing stars. The nefarious warriors repeatedly miss their target with the spinning shuriken but Brand New Day hits its intended targets with ferocity and intent.