Green Lantern – review

Ryan Reynolds nails down his A-lister status with a big superhero role. He is the Green Lantern in this big, baggy, flavourless 3D extravaganza in which his superheroic powers are explained with a long and tiring "mythic" prelude on a planet far, far away. Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, a test pilot and all-around hunky hothead, who discovers a green ring from another world, which gives him superpowers and a green costume, and also membership of an intergalactic green force that fights evil wherever it may be. Peter Sarsgaard plays Hector Hammond, a scientist who goes over to the dark side, having ingested alien spores that make him look like the Elephant Man. This is sometimes engagingly daft, but it simply fails to spark, and Reynolds – so good in recent movies like Buried and The Nines – just looks like a slice of inert beefcake. Incidentally, he looks like taking over Matthew McConaughey's award as the actor most likely to get his shirt off.