Ant-Man

Ant-Man, building on the ever-expanding Avengers universe of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, channels ’50s sci-fi spectaculars like The Incredible Shrinking Man while incorporating the best elements of heist-with-a-twist capers like Ocean’s Eleven and Inception. This summer thriller dazzles with deft plotting, stunning action, and cheeky humor.

Paul Rudd stars as Scott Lang, a cat burglar frustrated in his attempts to go straight. Desperate for money so he can resume visitation with his daughter, Scott returns to thievery. His steely nerves are tested during a break-in—a job that turns out to be a setup. The mysterious Dr. Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) needs a man with Scott’s unique skills to infiltrate a secret weapons lab controlled by Pym’s sullen ex-protégé (and de rigueur evil capitalist) Darren Cross, who plans to use Pym’s revolutionary shrinking technology to foster chaos-for-profit.

Ant-Man is rated PG-13 for violence, unnecessary expletives, and some brief sexual dialogue, but the fight scenes display a welcome absence of brutality. Moreover, the movie spoons out everything we need to follow the story, but not so much that we begin to question all the pseudoscientific hocus-pocus that passes for exposition.

As he fights to win back his daughter (with saving the world a distant afterthought), Scott’s inexorable progression toward self-sacrifice is mirrored in the relationship between Dr. Pym and his estranged daughter, played by Evangeline Lilly. Years earlier her mother had suffered a miniaturization-gone-awry, bringing into focus the perils confronting Scott as Ant-Man.

Despite a breathless pace and wacky inventiveness, the movie is most effective in its quiet moments. Scott’s ex-wife presses him to shape up for their daughter, urging him to “be the person she already thinks you are.” One can’t help but be reminded of Christ’s promise to His redeemed: We are a new creation.

It’s easy to identify with the self-effacing Scott as a struggling sinner seeking redemption. We’re walking the same road—with fewer explosions.