Can War itself be made obsolete? Wonder Woman hopes it can.

Rating: 7/10 (3 July 2017)

Most superhero action films are long on the action, and short on any real meaning. By that I mean films like "Spiderman," "The Avengers," and the endless series of sequels to those films and others serve to entertain us without actually making any kind of statement. Most of the angst provided by the aforementioned films deals with the personal lives of the heroes, and they generally don't take the time to comment on the reality we live in. "Wonder Woman" is really not like those movies in that regard. Sure, it entertains, but it also says something about what is happening in our world today.
"Wonder Woman" is set during the Great War (WWI), mostly. The film is as much about the horrors of war and the never ending conflict between human beings as it is about a superhero saving the day in daring and dashing fashion. The film begins in the present day and quickly moves to the past and a mysterious hidden island inhabited by female warriors called Amazons. We are all familiar with the Amazon concept, but the film explains their origins and why they are here.
Young Diana (Lily Aspell) is the only child on the island, daughter of the Amazon queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) (although Diana's actual origins are mysterious). The queen is protective of her child and doesn't want her to train with the other warriors. Of course the young girl wants to learn how to fight so badly she manages to get some training from Hippolyta's sister, Antiope (Robin Wright). It should be noted that both Nielsen and Wright are very good in their all too brief appearances in the film.
When an airplane breaches the secrecy of the island and crashes just off the beach, a now older Diana (Gal Gadot) rescues the pilot, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine). She learns from him about the Great War being fought in the outside world, and Diana knows she must leave the island to find what she believes is the root cause of the conflict, the god Ares. She believes that by stopping (killing) Ares, she can put an end to war itself.
Diana gets a last name, Prince, from Trevor after she travels with him to London, England, and there are some amusing sequences because of her obvious naiveté and lack of experience with our world. Diana is kind of a wide eyed innocent, a lethal wide eyed innocent I might add, and Trevor has to keep her in line as best as he can. Ultimately the pair of them are joined by some of Trevor's less than respectable friends, Sameer (Said Taghmaoui), Charlie (Ewen Bremner), and The Chief (Eugene Brave Rock). Together the group heads to the front lines in search of Ares, and an end to War.
Directed by Patty Jenkins (Monster), the film's pacing is a strong point, as it never moves along too fast or too slowly. "Wonder Woman" is not a great movie, but it is a good one and worthy of being considered one of the best of the DC series of films.