Okay, but very flawed. Ultimately a disappointment.

Rating: 3/10 (13 June 2013)

I've read reviews praising Cavill's performance as Superman, but honestly it's not that hard to get Superman right. The very least you have to do is just be generally likable. Too bad Tom Welling never quite managed it.
Some of the best moments in the film are earlier on when we see him rescue some workers from a burning oil rig. And when Clark first dons the suit and starts flying, there's a wonderful scene where he first starts leaping higher and higher in the air, testing the limits of his powers until he finally begins to soar, with an exhilarated expression on his face.
Michael Shannon's Zod is really good. Not only is he intense and threatening, but he's genuinely sympathetic. This Zod isn't just interested in having people kneel before him, he's trying to save Krypton. It's his entire motivation. It's literally the thing he was born to do, and he can do nothing else.
There's a central theme in this film of choice. Kal-el is a special child because he's the first Kryptonian born in centuries who isn't genetically engineered specifically for one purpose. His life is filled with choice. Growing up on the Kent farm his father in one scene lectures him on the importance of choice, and choosing who he'll be. Later he's faced with two difficult choices, first to choose between himself and the Earth, and later between his entire race and that of his adoptive home. And in the end, it's Zod's lack of choice that is his tragic downfall.
Then we have Jonathan Kent, the first of my major complaints with the film. This film's Jonathan Kent is a loving father with some tender moments, but he's also a cold-hearted cynic who, rather than instill his son with a deep sense of morality and the importance of the value of life, he encourages him to disregard lives, to put himself ahead of others. There was a great controversy made over the "maybe" line in the trailers, where young Clark asks his father "What was I supposed to do, just let them die?" and his father answers with "maybe." I was okay with that line in the trailer, but in the actual film the line is delivered with more conviction. Jonathan is scolding Clark for saving a bus-load of children and never actually acknowledges that it was ultimately the right thing to do. He believes so much in humanity's worst nature that he would rather let a bus-load of children die than risk Clark's exposure to our undeserving world.
Most of my problems with the film actually come after Clark finally puts on the suit. It was at this point I began to notice at this point the odd pacing of this film. A lot of scenes are short and lack any sense of transition. Characters will just be having a conversation and then suddenly they're in a different scene and a different location. At one point Meloni and Richard Schiff are discussing a plan to fight Zod with a missile, and it seems like moments later they were just suddenly on the plane. The entire film is like this.
And then there's the big spoiler, Zod's death scene.
This was the thing that turned me off to the film completely when I read it in a review. I was going to skip the film were it not for getting a free preview screening. Superman doesn't kill. Superman never kills.
So Superman kills Zod at the end.
And it wasn't that bad. It was well handled. I mean, as important as it is that Superman values all life and would never kill, I can also accept that this is a contrivance of the stories and the situations he's in. Any man put into the right situation could be forced to kill, and that's what happens in the end. Zod puts him in a situation where his ONLY choice is to either kill Zod or allow innocent humans to be killed by him. Again it all comes down to choice. And in the end Superman chooses to kill Zod. He begs him to stop, pleads with him not to make him do it, and then is broken by the act of taking a life. It was a powerful scene.
And here's my problem with it: this movie didn't earn it.
This Superman is never shown to have such a profound sense of the value of life. His primary moral figure was a man that encouraged him to let people die. And the first thing he does after putting on the cape, the very first thing, is a prolonged non-stop fight with Zod and co., ultimately ending in his killing of Zod. He never spends any time AS Superman before Zod shows up. He never spends time being the hero, saving lives, inspiring hope. He just puts on the cape and then Zod happens. So, essentially, Superman's first act as Superman is to kill someone.
Ultimately my disappointment was that I never felt like this Superman cared, truly cared, about the lives he was saving.
Sure, we do see him perform some rescues, the aforementioned oil rig and bus-load of children, but all of that is before he becomes Superman, before he becomes that symbol of hope. The only thing we see him do as Superman is just fight Zod and his minions in a series of long, drawn-out action sequences.
So yes, Zod's death scene was well-handled and it doesn't bother me as a scene, but I don't think that it was earned.
Finally, as a parting thought, while I was leaving the cinema I went into the bathroom and overheard a small boy of nine or ten exclaiming excitedly to his friend about how "Superman killed General Zod Mortal Kombat style!" Our hero, the Man of Steel.