Supergirl: Mark Kermode’s superhero film review (video).

Here’s Mark Kermode’s take on the flick, followed by our trip to the cinema to see the new Supergirl film.

Supergirl arrives as the second big-screen brick in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s freshly mortared DC Universe, and it wastes little time informing us that Kara Zor-El is not simply Superman with better hair and a slightly more compact merchandising footprint. Clark Kent was raised by kindly farmers. Kara watched Krypton die, grew up on a doomed city-sized cosmic scab, and now deals with trauma by travelling the galaxy with a super-dog and seeking out red-sun planets where she can actually get drunk. Frankly, compared with most superhero origin stories, this already sounds like a healthier lifestyle choice.

Milly Alcock plays Kara as a bruised, bolshie, hungover meteor of resentment. She has the cape, the powers and the noble bloodline, but not yet the saintly patience. If Superman sees goodness in everyone, Kara sees the invoice, the bloodstain and the suspicious bloke near the exits. Alcock’s performance is easily the film’s strongest card: twitchy, wounded, funny and sharp enough to cut through the usual franchise fog. She makes Supergirl feel less like a corporate asset in boots and more like someone who has been issued godlike abilities before being given the emotional instruction manual.

The plot sends her across space on a vengeance trail after Ruthye Marye Knoll, played by Eve Ridley, crosses her path. Ruthye’s family has been slaughtered by Krem of the Yellow Hills, a pirate, villain and apparent graduate of the School of Wearing Too Much Leather While Being Awful. Kara initially wants no part in the revenge business, but then Krypto is poisoned, and suddenly the film has discovered the one motivational device stronger than justice: harm the dog and the audience will personally volunteer for orbital combat.

From there, Supergirl becomes a space-western road movie with bits of True Grit, John Wick, Mad Max and the usual DC warehouse of glowing things. Kara and Ruthye pursue Krem through a series of planets, raiders, traffickers, brigands and cosmic bad decisions. It is an agreeably pulpy set-up, the sort of thing that should feel like a savage paperback cover from 1978 discovered in a bus station staffed by aliens. At its best, the film understands that space opera works when the universe feels grubby, enormous and faintly dangerous, rather than merely expensive.

Craig Gillespie gives the film a scruffier, more bruised tone than Superman, and that is welcome. This Kara is not here to reassure kittens or pose against a sunrise while someone tunes a trumpet. She is angry, guilty and uncertain of whether being heroic is a destiny, a duty or just another family curse with better tailoring. The film’s handling of grief is not always deep, but it is at least present. Kara’s trauma is not decorative wallpaper. It is the engine coughing smoke under the bonnet.

Jason Momoa’s Lobo, meanwhile, turns up as if someone fed Aquaman after midnight and let him loose in a biker bar. He is broad, loud and exactly the kind of character who seems designed to chew scenery even when the scenery is computer-generated. Used sparingly, he gives the film a shot of cosmic lager. Used too much, he might have tipped the whole enterprise into a convention-panel fever dream, so the film is wise not to let him completely steal the spaceship.

The problem is that Supergirl keeps circling emotional territory it does not quite land on. The Kara and Ruthye pairing should be the radioactive heart of the movie: two damaged people deciding whether vengeance is justice wearing a cheaper coat. Yet the film too often hurries from one incident to the next, letting the action do the talking even when the action is mostly shouting with sparks on. Krem is nasty, certainly, but not especially memorable. He functions more as a mobile revenge button than a villain with real weight. Matthias Schoenaerts gives him presence, but the screenplay rarely gives him menace beyond the obvious moustache-twirling nastiness, even when no actual moustache is available for twirling.

The needle drops also threaten to become less soundtrack and more hostage situation. There are moments when the music punches through nicely, lending Kara’s messy journey a pop-punk thump. There are others where the film appears worried that if a scene sits still for eight seconds, an executive somewhere will faint into a spreadsheet. The result is energetic, but not always graceful. This is a film with swagger, but it occasionally trips over its own cape while checking whether we noticed the swagger.

Still, Alcock keeps dragging it back into orbit. She is the reason Supergirl works when it works, and the reason its weaker moments feel frustrating rather than fatal. There is a genuinely interesting version of Kara here: not the sunny cousin, not the Girl Scout with heat vision, but a survivor who has mistaken emotional armour for identity. When the film allows her to be quiet, angry or awkward, it finds something worth watching. When it panics and throws more pirates at the screen, it becomes another superhero film trying to outrun its own formula.

Here at SFcrowsnest magazine, we like a superhero film that remembers outer space should contain more than smooth helmets and taxation problems. Supergirl has a fine lead performance, a decent dog-in-danger hook, some entertaining cosmic grit and enough personality to avoid becoming mere franchise plumbing. But it also has a thin revenge plot, a forgettable villain and a tendency to confuse volume with momentum. It is not the great DC reinvention one might have hoped for, but nor is it the smoking crater some will gleefully describe from the cheaper seats.

In the end, Supergirl is a promising heroine waiting for a sharper film. Milly Alcock deserves another flight. Preferably one with better navigation, a stronger villain and someone in mission control brave enough to turn down the jukebox.