The “Heist” movie. What an under-served film genre. Some of the most exciting action/thrillers in film history fall under the “heist movie” heading. Most recently, folks would probably name the Clooney/Pitt Ocean’s Eleven (and Twelve… and Thirteen) flicks, but there are also such entries as Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Michael Mann’s Heat, and the original Italian Job (although the remake wasn’t awful, either). When Marvel’s chief of production Kevin Fiege announced all those months ago that Ant-Man would be Marvel’s “heist” movie, my interest was piqued. Sure, it’s the next installment in the ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe series, so I’d have gotten in line and bought my ticket even if I knew it was going to just be two hours of Captain America and Falcon doing their laundry. More casual moviegoers will probably hope for something a bit more dramatically involved, however.
So what’s it about, you ask? Well, Paul Rudd plays Scott Lang, a professional thief in San Francisco, who winds up helping old, affluent scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) prevent his protégé, Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), from doing terrible things with a special suit that allows the wearer to shrink down to a bug-size super-soldier. Pym has a suit of his own, which he gives to Lang. With the help of Pym’s envious daughter Hope (Evangeline Lilly, who, in a pageboy wig, doesn’t look a day over Barbara Hershey), Pym trains Lang to break into his lab, which Cross controls, dismantle the new suit and wipe out all the data and research necessary to produce more. And that is mercifully that.
If you’re not aware of all the drama involved in bringing Ant-Man to the screen, that most likely means you’re not one to follow the ins and outs of the movie industry and probably don’t care. Take my word for it, though - given how much went on in the eight years it took to get this movie to the big screen, it is amazing that the finished product is as good as it is. Director Peyton Reed (Down With Love, Bring It On) was a marvelous (no pun intended) choice to replace Shaun of the Dead's Edgar Wright, who left the project due to those infamous “creative difference” a mere weeks before filming was to begin. Reed’s experience with placing a light-hearted, but not outright ridiculous tone on material proves we should never doubt Marvel’s decisions about what’s right for THEIR material. The way I imagine Edgar Wright would’ve made this film would almost certainly have resulted in something that was more HIS and not Marvel’s, and we just can’t have that, now can we…?
What allows Ant-Man to flourish is that it largely turns its back on the solemnity and self-importance that occasionally hamper Marvel features and instead traffics in the same sort of freewheeling frivolity seen in last summer's Guardians of the Galaxy. For that, thank the four screenwriters — Wright, Attack the Block's Joe Cornish, “Funny or Die”'s Adam McKay and Rudd himself — and their ability to include witticisms both verbal ("tales to astonish" is there for the comic fans) and visual (I loved -the bug zapper, and is that oversized toy with the happy face a nod to Ghostbusters?). Rudd and a scene-stealing Michael Peña (as Lang's ex-con buddy) further contribute to the gee-whiz spirit, with Douglas and Lilly staking out most of the dramatic content. Even Ant-Man’s encounter with a particular Avenger, while obviously shoehorned into the movie as a means of tying the movie to the larger Universe, was written and executed so well that it didn’t bother me or make me feel the plot had ground to a halt.
The effects are excellent in general, particularly the final showdown in a child’s bedroom. The sequence is such a contrast to the world-sized, city-destroying spectacle climaxes of most superhero flicks that it must be applauded for merely trying it. That the film pulls it off is even better. Ironically, only the film’s ants fail to completely convince. Granted, they're not laughable creations on the order of the insects seen in the '70s shlock flick Empire of the Ants, but they're obvious enough as CGI to bug all but the most forgiving of Marvel devotees.
While I learned enough about all the protagonist characters to interest me and bring me to care about them, I admit I’d like to have seen a bit more development of the villain, Darren Cross. I suppose in one sense, he’s the bad guy and we see that he’s a sicko, and that should be enough, but part of me wished for some more insight on why this guy was so intense in his dislike-bordering-on-hatred for his mentor/father-figure, and how on Earth he’d risen so far being so obvious a nut-job. The movie is called Ant-Man, though, not “Yellowjacket,” so if this is my only beef with the film, it must be a pretty trivial one.
The final result of all this is that I must say Marvel appears to be bulletproof. I certainly wouldn’t begin to think of placing Ant-Man on a list with such “heist” classics as I’ve listed earlier, but it doesn't do that label any disservice. While that may be the mindset the brain-trust at Marvel used as inspiration for the movie’s tone, it’s not what actually resulted. But that’s fine - what did result was an entry in an on-going film series that fits perfectly, yet can be viewed independently and enjoyed all by itself. Ant-Man is funny, clever blast of a movie.
Paul Rudd’s style and personality are used so perfectly in this role that it’s become one of those instances where you can’t imagine anyone else doing it. His Scott Lang may be a superhero, but everything he does right is so heavily qualified — mostly because he never manages to save the day without alienating his friends and loved ones — that his sense of self-worth is constantly reduced to human scale. His character-defining shortcomings are on display throughout the new film every time he tries to puff out his chest. You know, he helped Captain America that one time, but only after he stole a super-suit from his mentor Hank Pym (Michael Douglas, who is still the master of convincing an audience that he’s suppressing an angry outburst). Yeah, he saved the world in Captain America: Civil War… or helped to, anyway, but without consulting his training (and romantic) partner Hope van Dyne (played with an air of self-confidence by Evangeline Lilly that in itself almost seems like a superpower). Sure, he's behaving now and starting his own security business in San Francisco, but he’s still under heavily-monitored house arrest. Lang is such a loveable loser because he’s the relatable, well-meaning small fry who tries, and often fails, to live up to expectations.
But the tangent-filled nature of Lang's story is the most charming aspect of both Ant-Man films. Lang's narrative is a revolving door of well-meaning outsiders — his ex-wife Maggie (Judy Greer) and her amiable wet blanket husband Paxton (Bobby Cannavale), along with Lang’s eager-to-please daughter Cassie (Abby Ryder Fortson) — and neurotic colleagues, like Lang’s "X-Con" security crew team of Kurt (David Dastmalchian), Dave (T.I.), and Luis (Michael Peña, again stealing every scene he's in). Many of these characters are also struggling to suppress their own habitual catastrophizing: if Ghost doesn’t steal and fire up Pym’s equipment now, she will die; if Pym doesn’t get Lang’s help in recovering his equipment, his wife will vanish; and if Lang doesn’t get back to his house before the FBI returns to check up on him, his new post-“Ant-Man” life is over. 
Thankfully, Reed capably (though not always gracefully) juggles these various plot points. Speaking of personality: the first half of Ant-Man and the Wasp — the part that’s most reliant on plot-pushing expository dialogue — definitely feels like it was cobbled together by a creative committee that includes the five credited writers and Heaven-only-knows how many uncredited ones. This minor shortcoming is why I spent much of this review praising the film’s characters and ideas, but not its brick-and-mortar storytelling. Like many films produced by Marvel Studios, this one sometimes feels “Paint-Superhero-Movie-by-Numbers,” marred by uninspired cinematography (by no less than Dante Spinotti, who has done stunning work on Michael Mann’s films over the years), and over-edited set pieces… but only sometimes.
