Madame Web
Dakota Johnson taps into new powers in a compelling thriller that weaves female empowerment with human potential.
The silk road: Celeste O’Connor, Dakota Johnson, Isabela Merced and Sydney Sweeney
Courtesy of Sony Pictures
There is a lot Cassie (Dakota Johnson) doesn’t know about herself. She does know that her mother Constance Webb (Kerry Bishé) died giving birth to her and that helping other people comes naturally to her. What she doesn’t know is that she has a neuromuscular disorder and that she is about to die. Three minutes later, after she has been resuscitated by her friend and colleague Ben Parker (Adam Scott), Cassie’s life is never quite the same again. She has strong feelings of déjà vu and, she quickly realises, she can anticipate future events by a few minutes…
Unlike other Marvel superhero movies, this origins story starts off in a recognisable reality in a specific period – 2003 – in a recognisable corner of Queens, New York. And Cassie, a paramedic with the FDNY, is only too human, a woman in her early thirties who doesn’t know how to take a compliment or accept a picture drawn for her by a young boy whose life she has saved. She’s also unthinking enough to talk about her mother’s death in the presence of her heavily pregnant friend Mary (Emma Roberts) at a baby shower. She is Clark Kent without the spectacles – and without the knowledge of her enormous mental and physical potential.
Human potential and female empowerment – along with the mysteries of the Amazon jungle (where Cassie was born) – are just three of the many themes woven into the web of S.J. Clarkson’s gripping and propulsive narrative. While most of the dramatis personae are female (including transport cops, therapists, nurses, optometrists, a computer hacker), the villain is a man, Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who doesn’t mind who he kills to advance his own agenda. In the prologue, set in Peru back in 1973, Ezekiel thinks nothing of shooting Cassie’s pregnant mother in order to claim the special spider she has located. And as he exploits the burgeoning resources of the worldwide web, Cassie weaves her own web to thwart his agenda. Plagued by nightmares of his own death at the hands of three teenage girls, Ezekiel is hellbent on tracking them down using the technology of facial recognition, still in its infancy in 2003.
Marking the theatrical film debut of the British director S.J. Clarkson, Madame Web moves along at quite a clip, yet with its feet largely on terra firma. In fact, such is Clarkson’s powers of storytelling – the way she moves her camera and focuses on the personality of her principals – that one forgets that this is a Marvel movie, in spite of clues littered throughout. There is a frisson of excitement that builds as Cassie comes to terms with her special powers, along with those of the teenage troika, the latter delightfully played by Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced and Sydney Sweeney, a rainbow coalition. Although Clarkson is a newbie to Hollywood, and to Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) in particular, she has a huge catalogue of small-screen credits, including EastEnders, Life on Mars, Succession and Anatomy of a Scandal. And whereas Birds of Prey and The Marvels have attempted to carve out a feminist corner of comic-book cinema, Madame Web feels entirely more grounded in a relatable universe. And all the ideas threaded into Cassie’s web are human, emotive and really worth exploring.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, Celeste O’Connor, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts, Adam Scott, Kerry Bishé, Zosia Mamet, José María Yazpik, Kathy-Ann Hart.
Dir S.J. Clarkson, Pro Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Screenplay Matt Sazama, Burk Sharpless, Claire Parker and S.J. Clarkson, Ph Mauro Fiore, Pro Des Ethan Tobman, Ed Leigh Folsom Boyd, Music Johan Söderqvist, Costumes Ngila Dickson, Sound Kevin O’Connell, Phil Barrie and Paul N.J. Ottosson.
Columbia Pictures/Di Bonaventura Pictures/Marvel Entertainment/TSG Entertainment-Sony Pictures.
116 mins. USA. 2024. UK and US Rel: 14 February 2024. Cert. 12A.
