ReviewFilm review: Doctor Strange – Benedict Cumberbatch shines in Marvel’s most psychedelic outing
A Hong Kong-set ending, time travel, superb special effects, fine acting and touch of Marvel humour make this comic book adaptation a real trip
4/5 stars
A brilliant neurosurgeon, Stephen Strange’s career appears over when a car accident disables his hands. Rejecting his sometime lover/friend Christine (Rachel McAdams), Strange goes East in search of alternative medicine to heal – encountering Tilda Swinton’s bald guru, The Ancient One, and her pupil Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who open Strange’s eyes to alternate dimensions and the harnessing of time-bending energies.
While not everyone is as they seem, the story’s de facto villain is Mads Mikkelsen’s Kaecilius, who has stolen pages from The Ancient One’s sacred texts in the search for eternal life. But the real trick pulled by director Scott Derrickson (Sinister, Deliver Us From Evil ) is interweaving the film’s CGI-laced universes with the real world as characters jump through portals, travelling from ancient lands to modern-day cities in an instant.