Marvel’s Doctor Strange lets the story drive the spectacular special-effects

MOVIE REVIEW: If you have already decided this is a year of the not-so-super superhero movie then Doctor Strange will undoubtedly change your mind.

DOCTOR STRANGE (M)

Director: Scott Derrickson (The Day the Earth Stood Still)

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tilda Swinton, Benedict Wong, Mads Mikkelsen, Rachel McAdams.

Rating: 4 / 5

Physician, heal thyself and hurl forward into the unknown

IF you have already pencilled a line through 2016 as the year of the not-so-super superhero movie — and who can blame you? — then Doctor Strange will be a tough sell.

Nevertheless, you might want to go off and find an eraser ASAP.

For this exciting, eccentric and often downright trippy action-adventure offering from the Marvel Entertainment stable confidently bucks the current downward trend of comic-book franchise filmmaking.

While Doctor Strange is compelled to service the obligatory requirements that come with a Marvel origin story, it does so with inspired casting choices and innovative thinking that render a familiar process in a fresh and fascinating light.

A motivated and energetic Benedict Cumberbatch stars as Dr. Stephen Strange, a gifted but self-centred neurosurgeon who is only in the brain-rewiring game for the prestige and money.

Doctor Stephen Strange (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) in a scene from Marvel’s latest film Doctor Strange. Picture: Jay Maidment / Marvel

Karma slaps him upsides the head with a terrifying car accident — don’t examine X-rays while making hairpin turns on coastal roads, kids! — and leaves Strange with irreparable nerve damage to his hands.

After hitting dead ends along all avenues of Western medicine, Strange’s last chance of ever picking up the scalpel again drags him all the way to Nepal.

It is here, in a rundown shack on a back alley in Kathmandu, that Strange comes face-to-face with a bald, beatifically calm mystic named the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton).

The Ancient One (played by Tilda Swinton) takes Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) under her wing. Picture: Jay Maidment / Marvel

She promises the possibility of returning steadiness to Strange’s shaking hands if he will submit to a punishing training regimen.

If the always-snarky Strange can drop the Mr Arrogant act and totally accept the existence of a parallel multiverse that can only be opened with the purest of willpower, then his own personal battle will be won.

This being a Marvel movie all but guarantees that myriad other battles won’t be so effortlessly resolved.

Doctor Strange’s ‘fight sequences transpire, a mind-bending psychedelia takes hold that is near-impossible to resist.’ Picture: Jay Maidment / Marvel

The Ancient One, her dutiful right-hand man Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and keeper of sacred tomes Wong (Benedict Wong) are locked in an ongoing struggle for control of that hidden multiverse with a former ally.

Kaecilius (Mads Mikkelsen) has taken the Ancient One’s best inside tips and shared them with a band of sorcerers hellbent on using them outside the time-honoured law.

If this all sounds too convolutely lightweight for words, don’t worry. Doctor Strange has a big-picture vision for how to tell this tale that clearly marks it as a heavyweight contender.

The winning move made by director Scott Derrickson is disarmingly simple, yet irrefutably effective. He lets the story drive the use of spectacular special-effects. So many big-ticket blockbusters of recent times have gone the opposite way, and either bored or confused us rigid.

Not this time. Whenever Doctor Strange moves the viewer through the many alternate dimensions in which its fight sequences transpire, a mind-bending psychedelia takes hold that is near-impossible to resist.

Seeing this controlled chaos unfolding on multiple planes of battle (the street fights conducted at a 90-degree angle to the ground are masterfully executed) makes the purchase of a 3D ticket a must.

Then there is the all-stops-out finale of Doctor Strange, which takes everything to the next level by somehow conveying the head-spinning concept of time unfolding in several directions at once. It is not often creative ambition and actual execution rise together to such atmospheric heights.