Ant-Man

A superhero film built as a heist. Scott comes out of prison. He is a computer engineer, served time for theft, and needs a proper job to be allowed to see his daughter. He cannot find work. His old friends bring him a description of a flat: there is a safe and nobody knows what is in it. A suit comes out of the safe. Scott tries it on and suddenly becomes very small in the bathroom. The owner of the safe had planned it. Hank Pym developed this technology years ago and hid it; now his former student is close to reproducing the formula. From there the film is a training and a heist. Working with ants, using the suit, assembling a team, and getting into a building. What the narrative is interested in is not power but scale: the film uses shrinking as both a joke and a threat, and a bathroom, a record needle and a child's bedroom become battlefields in turn. The finale takes place on a toy train, and as the scale changes the film shows the same scene at two sizes. The father and daughter line is the emotional skeleton and works across two generations. The production has a long history. The project was developed for years by another director, who left shortly before shooting, and the film was completed with someone else. Traces of that period remain in the script. Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Corey Stoll and Michael Peña are in the cast. Peyton Reed directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants a small-scale, comic superhero film. Who it is not for: anyone looking for a serious narrative; the villain is weak and the plot is familiar.