The Many Layers of Thelma

Sylvester Stallone was 73 years old when Rambo: Last Blood was released. By this time the future Special Ambassador to Hollywood for President Trump had a metal plate in his neck, which he received after being body slammed by Stone Cold Steve Austin while filming The Expendables nearly a decade earlier. A film about a septuagenarian badass with an abundance of facial cosmetic surgery sounds like a comedy to me, but Last Blood was as serious as human trafficking. Or at least, it tried to be.

Critics excoriated the film for a variety of reasons, but the absurdity of 73-year-old one-man army was not a common theme in their reviews. Perhaps movies about retired badasses getting back into action to correct some injustice are just so commonplace that critics didn't even notice. After watching Thelma, I can't help but think writer/director Josh Margolin noticed.

Margolin's maiden voyage into feature films is billed as an action-comedy, though I would classify it as a satire of action movies. Margolin's script manages to melt a great many action movie tropes and mold them into new forms that fit his premise. Where Ethan Hunt uses a hidden earpiece to communicate with his team, Thelma uses her hearing aids paired with a cellphone. Daniel, her grandson, played by Fred Hechinger, fills the "tech guy in a van" role, helping Thelma log into a banking website over the phone, after which she says, "I'm in!" Ben and Gale, Thelma's millennialesque children, played by Parker Posey and Clark Gregg, fill in for the secret agents who chase the hero throughout the film, only to be thwarted by quick thinking. When she enlists the help of none other than Richard Roundtree, best known for playing Shaft, in her quest to correct the injustice done to her, he claims his half of the buddy cop dynamic telling Thelma, "I'm not gonna let you go alone!"

Classic.

Rather than giving the elderly protagonist a background as a secret agent for a Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency, and making her an unstoppable killing machine, Thelma utilizes the advanced age of its protagonist to turn mundane obstacles like a few flights of stairs into challenging missions. This approach takes a plot that could have easily fallen into slapstick schlock territory and produces a film that is heartfelt and still hilarious.

Meanwhile, the inter-generational dynamics of the characters treats us to some interesting subtext. Ben and Gale are well-meaning but insufferable. They try to be supportive, but they believe there is no problem that can't be resolved, or at least explained, by a Google search. Their zoomer son is a wreck who struggles to navigate the techno dystopia of his parents' generation.

The scam Thelma falls for is quite real, utilizing AI voice cloning to pose as Daniel. It's something that even non-elderly people could fall for, yet Ben and Gale immediately assume her victimization is the result of cognitive decline. Thelma's children grab hold of anything they can to validate their view. They speak to both her and Daniel in a patronizing way, infantilizing them both.

Thelma has a lot going on and it weaves it all together in a way that seems effortless. It's a fantastic feature debut for Josh Margolin and I'll be keeping a lookout for whatever he does next.