Once again, Andrea Romano amazes with her voice casting. No stunt casting (say, Lynda Carter as Hippolyta) and the choices (save perhaps Nathan Fillion who is always the snarky Texan Nathan Fillion) do not bludgeon you with the actor's identity.
I typically don't like knowing who is voicing which character because I know Romano puts "name" actors into roles without hitting you in the face with them. With Romano, the story and character is put before the actor performing the role. I enjoy the game of hearing a voice and putting it to a face and in all but a few choices I find myself saying "DAMN that was a brilliant casting choice."
It took me until the end of the film before I realized Rosario Dawson was performing Artemis, and Dawson has a distinctive voice. Oliver Platt, who is usually the first to ham it up melts into his Harrod-like role as Hades. Alfred Molina did not sound like himself and I kept thinking it was either Dean Stockwell or Miguel Ferrer. I would have been easy for Molina to phone it in with a low, sinister variation on Doc Ock from Spiderman 2, but he wore the character very well.
The film itself is a simple tale of Diana finding herself in the modern world, sparring with Steve Trevor as they search for the god Ares, who escaped Paradise Island and has the usual "conquer the gods" plan that somehow involves leveling Washington DC before he can assume the power of Zeus and be top god or whatever. I'm not complaining because gods do what gods always do in these movies and I don't expect deep political intrigue in a movie meant to be more "300" with hotties than "Clash of the Titans".
The first third of the movie involves the war between Ares' forces and the Amazons which leads to Ares imprisonment and then Trevor's time in Themyscira. The opening war sequence is impressive and communicates that this show will contain bloodletting, decapitations and some gore. It's not "Heavy Metal" in that regard, but it does not shy away from casualties on both sides. Once the plot is set up and the backstory settled, we move forward in time to Steve Trevor and his dogfight that causes him to crash on the island of Amazons. Up to this point, it rocks.
Whenever the movie tries to shoehorn the staples of the WW mythology, it slows down or doesn't quite fit. I know we have to map a route to a specific destination, but after establishing how tough Amazons are it seems odd for the armored warriors to honor their champion with a Hooter's uniform. Trevor's amused expression when the costume is revealed makes perfect sense when you think about it, especially when Hippolyta tries to explain it away as a ceremonial garment intentionally using the colors of freedom loving nations. Later in New York City, Trevor all but says she looks like a prostitute when suggesting she find something to wear that "won't get me arrested for solicitation".
The dialogue is crisp and only fails when we find Madsen and Fillion trudging through long, leading pages about sexism and girl power that really only exist because they have to. They don't really resolve the differences between the characters and are somewhat disingenuous - Trevor is a sexist who repeatedly mentions Diana's hotness and Diana is all amazon, but fawns over Trevor's corny lines about how the world is a better place with her in it.
But this is a minor problem that I don't think any incarnation of WW has really dealt with well.
The epic scope of this movie and its massive battle sequences remove WW from the 1970s jigglefest, gorilla wrestling and close-quarters slapfights and the PG-13 rating allows the story to show the kind of violence necessary to convince us that the Amazons are serious warriors and not just toga-wearing supermodels. The pivotal combat sequence in Washington is spectacular in it's attention to detail. The battle crosses different monuments and even feels like it was blocked so that a punch from one location in a particular direction would send the target flying into the air landing near the right monument.
The only thing that bothered me is that this is a DC Universe title and as such, the scope of the conflict would have attracted members of The League, or at least a few other superpowers. That's the problem with having the license to the entire universe...you can't dismiss the logical cue for Superman to appear just because someone else owns the rights.
There is not a lot of difference between the work Susan Eisenberg put into Justice League Unlimited and the performance of Keri Russell. Russel's WW simply sounds younger, which makes sense since this is Diana's first adventure in the modern world. The character design is very similar, but thankfully more Amazonian. The JL/JLU Diana always seemed too girly for my taste. Diana truly seems imposing in this incarnation.
This is a good one to pick up, particularly if you've been waiting for a WW story that doesn't relegate her to a supporting role or make her seem alien and selectively submissive to men.
