Nobody Remembers Peter Parker. The Movie Remembers Why We Do.

Here is the situation, and it's a doozy even by Marvel's standards: the whole world has forgotten Peter Parker. That was the price he paid at the end of the last film — everyone he loves looks straight through him, including the girl he did it for. Brand New Day opens on the other side of that bargain, with Peter (Tom Holland) living like a man attending his own memorial service every single day. New York still loves Spider-Man. Nobody remembers the kid inside him.

That's a genuinely sad premise for a summer blockbuster, and the film's best decision — director Destin Daniel Cretton's decision, I'd wager, since the man made Short Term 12 before he ever touched a franchise — is to take the sadness seriously. This is the most grounded movie this Spider-Man has been given: fewer portals, more sidewalks. Holland, who has been playing this part since he was a teenager, finally gets to act his character's age, and there's a weariness in his Peter now that he wears like a coat that doesn't quite fit yet. It's lovely work. When the grief starts changing him — in ways he can't always control, which is as much as I'll say — Holland sells the fear of it, not just the spectacle.

The Friday-night ledger

Does it deliver as a Spider-Man picture? Mostly, yes. The new villain is a nasty piece of business — a presence that jumps from body to body, so that anyone on any street corner might suddenly be the enemy. It's a horror-movie idea smuggled into a superhero film, and Cretton stages it for paranoia rather than pyrotechnics; the crowd around me went quiet in the right ways. The trail leads into Damage Control, the government outfit that warehouses everything dangerous the heroes leave behind, and if you can't guess that something in that warehouse matters, you have never seen a movie.

Then there's Frank Castle. Jon Bernthal's Punisher wanders into this film like a man who got off at the wrong bus stop and decided to stay, and the pairing shouldn't work at all — the boy scout and the executioner — except that it absolutely does. Bernthal plays Frank as Spidey's alarming friend from work, all coiled menace and terrible advice, and every scene they share has a live-wire crackle the film could use more of. Mark Ruffalo turns up too, as the one man in the world qualified to counsel Peter on the subject of losing control of what's inside you. Their quiet scene together is the movie's best.

Where it strains

I'll be honest about the middle hour: it's carrying too many groceries. A body-hopping villain, a government conspiracy, the Castle problem, the Banner consultations, Sadie Sink's character — who matters a great deal, and about whom I'll say nothing — plus a hero quietly coming apart. You can feel the film working hard to be mature, and when you can feel the effort, you're being taken out of the story to admire the sweat. A leaner cut of this movie is a great one. The cut we got is a good one that keeps clearing its throat.