Doctor Strange Pairs Some Inventive and Visually Stunning Action With Some Excellent Work From Benedict Cumberbatch

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2016)

Doctor Strange wasn't as obscure as the Guardians of the Galaxy but the movie remained a risk for Marvel Studios. They brought in a different kind of director, Scott Derrickson has done some good work (Sinister is one of my all time favourite horror movies) but he's an outside-the-box pick for a big budget superhero movie. He's paired up with his writing partner from Sinister C. Robert Cargill and even though the trailer looked good, I didn't really know what to expect from Doctor Strange. What we ended up with was a solidly written origin story with some excellent action and the impeccably well cast Benedict Cumberbatch nailing it as Dr. Stephen Strange.
*Minor Spoilers Ahead* We join Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) as he's wrapping up surgery. He's in his element, he jokes around with the nurses and strokes his own ego. He bumps into his colleague Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams) and she shows him a case from that day. Together they make a unique discovery and rush to stop the doctor attending to his case Dr. Nicodemus West (Michael Stuhlbarg) who was looking to harvest the guy's organs (its assumed the patient is dead). They pull the patient back into the ER and remove a fully formed bullet from his brain. They are able to save his life, which leads to more bragging from Stephen. Christine is willing to play along but backs off when Stephen tries to ask her to accompany him to his speaking engagement that night.
We get a quick look into Stephen's life and he appears to have everything you could ever want. He's got the fancy apartment, the expensive clothes and the beautiful sports car. He's driving to the engagement and turning jobs down left and right over the phone because they aren't hard enough or there isn't enough publicity in it. He's distracted and he gets into an accident in which his car careens down a cliff. He spends many hours in surgery and awakes with Christine at his bedside. She tells him that due to them taking so long to find him, their ability to fix the damaged nerves was compromised. He can no longer operate his hands in the finely tuned way that he needs to do his job. Instead of feeling grateful to be alive, Dr. Strange can't deal with the fact that he's recovering fast enough and has to turn to more extreme means to try and fix his hands and regain control of his gift.
Pretty much every review you're going to read for Doctor Strange is going to begin by talking about the action and the visuals. I'll change it up a little bit and start with the plot. The most popular criticism of the movie is that it's still your typical origin story. I would partially concede this point. Much like another awesome superhero movie that came out this year (Deadpool), the overall arc of the plot isn't revolutionary. But also like Deadpool, how they choose to show it to you is different and this movie has more than enough style and energy to make it it's own thing. They bring in nice little touches like how Dr. Strange is a pretty big @$$^&(#. He's awful to Christine during his recovery and can't set aside his own ego. They give the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) a lot of depth and I really liked the development of the characters. Even Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelson) is relatively understandable, even though the movie continues the Marvel trend of their heroes completely overshadowing their villains. A small criticism is that while the movie has a sense of humour, it's hit or miss and the movie seems to be trying a little too hard at points to be funny. It's a minor misstep, it works well at times but it doesn't 100%.
One of the other things that they do so well at Marvel Studios is that they have a knack for finding the right actors for the right parts. Benedict Cumberbatch knocks it out of the park as Dr. Stephen Strange. Sure, the character is suited to his strengths but he carries this movie effortlessly. There was some controversy around the casting of Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One but I thought she was great. Despite the fact that she's more of an indie star, she stepped into this part with a lot of grace and she was excellent. Rachel McAdams and Chiwetel Ejiofor are great actors and while they both turn in solid performances, I was surprised that they signed up for this. I don't know if their characters matched two actors of their calibre. Benedict Wong was good in his supporting part. I liked Mads Mikkelsen too, he brings a lot of presence to his character and helps to get his motivations across.
I don't want to forget about the biggest reason to go watch this movie. The visuals and the action scenes are really impressive. While some movies can bring new things to the table visually but don't know how to use them to enhance the story, Doctor Strange does that in spades. The action set pieces take place in locations that are constantly changing and introducing new concepts like travelling across parallel universes instantly or teleporting to different locations. The farther out concepts of the source material are harnessed brilliantly and from playing with time to fighting outside characters' physical bodies to creating weapons out of thin air, I was fascinated throughout.
I can't say that Doctor Strange is perfect or is the best Marvel standalone movie (it would be in my top 5), but I felt it lived up to the hype. It works because it tries different things and shows that Marvel Studios isn't about to coast on its previous successes. I hope we get to see Dr. Strange cross over into other movies and get to see a sequel before too long.