Chris Pine as American spy Steve Trevor crash-lands in the sea with a German platoon on his tail. After a humdrum training montage against settings that look like rear projections, the movie begins to shake off its doldrums. You do have to wait for Gadot’s Wonder Woman to appear in costume. I didn’t miss Lynda Carter’s buxom, apple-cheeked pinup, though. Slobbering, S&M-oriented American patriots will be even more put out, given that WW is no longer dressed in red, white, and blue but golden-toned for the international - and perhaps these days less American-friendly - ticket buyers. With a female director, Patty Jenkins, at the helm, Diana isn’t even photographed to elicit slobbers. While this Wonder Woman is still into ropes (Diana’s lasso both catches bad guys and squeezes the truth out of them), fans might be disappointed that there’s no trace of the comic’s well-documented S&M kinkiness. Why do humans kill the innocent? Where is Ares? Are men necessary for anything but procreation? (Israeli women are a breed unto themselves, which I say with both admiration and trepidation.) In some scenes, Gadot’s Diana pauses mid-rant and a vertical crease appears at the base of her broad forehead - her mind is churning. She’s a treat here with her raspy accented voice and driving delivery. But maybe it was Ben Affleck’s heaviness that dragged her down. Her elation while fighting made for a welcome counterpoint to all the gloom, but she seemed like a stiff out of costume.

Gadot didn’t wow me in her debut in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Wonder Woman is the story of how Diana learns a more complicated truth, one that won’t be big news to you, but then you weren’t sculpted from clay. She simply believes that humans are inherently good and that there’d be no war if Ares weren’t putting evil thoughts in people’s heads. (I’d like to have seen that.) The movie chronicles her hunt for another spawn of Zeus: Ares, god of war, whom she’s convinced is responsible for the ongoing barbarity on Flanders Field and other parts of Europe. She was, we’re told, sculpted by her mother from clay and brought to life by Zeus. Diana lives with Amazon women on a mystically shrouded island but she’s not Amazonian herself. She plays Diana, the daughter of the Amazon queen Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and a trained warrior. The only grace note in the generally clunky Wonder Woman is its star, the five-foot-ten-inch Israeli actress and model Gal Gadot, who is somehow the perfect blend of superbabe-in-the-woods innocence and mouthiness.

Instal the new for apple Wonder Woman