DOCTOR STRANGE
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH is magic as Marvel’s new movie superhero
COMIC-BOOK ADVENTURE
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH IS the go-to guy to play intellectually brilliant, emotionally cold, slightly sociopathic characters. Marvel Comics superhero Doctor Strange, an aloof, arrogant neurosurgeon who becomes a powerful sorcerer, is another of his cold-fish geniuses, a brainy brother under the skin to Sherlock Holmes and Alan Turing.
Those two were hardly people pleasers, but the haughty Strange is even more overbearing, until a gruesome car crash damages the nerves in his hands. His quest for a cure takes him to Kathmandu, where an enigmatic mystic known as the Ancient One (beguilingly played by a bald, androgynous Tilda Swinton) sets him on the road to redemption.
And the new sorcery skills he acquires, with help from the Ancient One’s chief lieutenants, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong, become crucial when nihilistic baddie Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) appears on the scene, threatening world destruction.
The ensuing adventure boasts truly dazzling visuals: cityscapes bend and fold as rival sorcerers reshape reality, conjuring up the origami dreamscapes of Christopher Nolan’s Inception and the mind-bending illusions of artist MC Escher. And when Strange ventures into different astral realms, his acid trip freak-out recalls the Star Gate sequence from 2001.
But it is Cumberbatch who makes the movie work. Sardonic and funny, he fits into the movie’s comic-book world surprisingly well. He manages Strange’s trademark Cloak of Levitation without looking camp and, when he’s casting spells, pulls off the occult mumbo-jumbo with equal panache. When it comes to acting magic, Cumberbatch really is a sorcerer. 2016, 12, 115min