DC Comics' straight-to-DVD animated films have so far been mature efforts like Superman: Doomsday and Batman: Gotham Knight, whose kinetic animation and violence seemed more oriented to adults than kids.

But unlike those films' storied subjects, Wonder Woman is an ancient goddess with a sexualized back story. Can the Amazonian princess with a less devoted following hang with the big boys? Yes, by kicking ass, cutting heads and playing the sex card the entire way.

Wonder Woman, released Tuesday on download, on-demand and DVD and Blu-ray, is an action-packed, take-no-prisoners film, the kind of thing you probably won't want your kids watching at all. That is, unless you want to spend your time explaining horny or scatalogical jokes to them, or shielding their eyes from and the gore and evil that men, and women, do.

(Spoiler alert: Plot details, and utterly awesome pictures, ahead.)

Directed with skill by Laura Montgomery and starring Keri Russell (Felicity) as the voice of bad-ass Princess Diana, Wonder Woman leans heavily on dizzying action and sexual tension to bridge the gaps between the character's various incarnations over the past seven decades.

This makes great sense: Wonder Woman was created by American psychologist William Moulton Marston, who lived openly in a polyamourous relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and his mistress, Olive Byrne. It was Elizabeth's idea that Marston turn his hero of love into a female; to this day, Wonder Woman remains one of feminism's most culturally accessible woman warriors.

But war is just part of her myth, as we see in the early moments of Wonder Woman, when Diana's mother, Hippolyta (an excellent Virginia Madsen) beheads her own son Thraxx in front of his father, Ares (the always reliable Alfred Molina), during a horrific battle between the Amazons and the god of war's minions.

Sex, or its disturbing aftermath, plays just as great a role in Michael Jelenic's clever script for Wonder Woman as it does in the character's back story. Hippolyta's guilt over her union with Ares and the bloodbath it creates sets the table for a literal battle of the sexes featuring more than one shadowed decapitation, plenty of hot-chick jokes and buckets of PG-13 gore.

After Hippolyta is stopped by Zeus and Hera from killing Ares outright, she is rewarded with a hermetically sealed paradise wherein she and her sisters can live, forever free from male violence. It doesn't take long for her to procreate without help: Hippolyta molds her baby Diana into being, using nothing but her hands, earth and some electrifying lightning from Zeus.

But like most paradises, Amazonian island nation Themyscira only looks good on paper. Hippolyta doesn't have long to wait before an overly protected Diana is longing for action, her subject Persephone is freeing Ares from prison, and, pardon the pun, cocky Air Force pilot Steve Trevor (Serenity's Nathan Fillion) is dropping out of the sky like one of Zeus' cruel jokes.

Wonder Woman soon leaves Themyscira. She's awestruck by the big city, as well as the male pigs that inhabit it (including Trevor, who Wonder Woman drinks under the table in a funny sequence, right before she beats the living crap out of overreaching thugs in a dark alley).

Alley thugs are just comic relief compared to the hellish horror of Ares, who is ultimately empowered by a slimy Hades (Oliver Platt, with delight, no doubt) to wreak havoc on Earth. Even Ares' unchecked male ego and aggression are somewhat humanized in the shadow of a celestial evil like the king of the underworld, who rudely bitch-slaps Ares' dead son in a deliciously nasty scene. Savvy film and comics fans can tell right there and then that Ares' deal with the devil will not end well for him.

Along the way, Wonder Woman skewers roles of both sexes in ways that will probably make fanboys and feminists equally happy. There are more than enough wisecracks about how hot Wonder Woman and the Amazons are, usually delivered by Trevor and more than once as he's wrapped up in a truth lasso. (When it comes to sexual desire, truth lassos are often double-edged swords.)

Men get what's coming to them. Wonder Woman emasculates Trevor repeatedly, calling him "a pathetic lightweight," and teaches a little girl a thrust attack so she can take apart boys who won't let her play swords with them. It's all so much beautiful in-joking. Castration comes in many flavors in Wonder Woman, and they all taste very cool indeed.

"Playing the sex card again, are you?" Trevor whines, after Wonder Woman bitch-slaps him for saving her rather than finishing off Ares in a fight. (There is lots of bitch-slapping in this film.) "I've had just about enough listening to you go on again about how terrible men are!"

"Does the truth hurt, Steve?" Wonder Woman sneers.

Why yes, Wonder Woman, it does. It hurts so good.

Wired: Cranked action, kinetic animation, righteous jokes, zombie battle

__Tired: __Marg Helgenberger's one-note Hera, Wonder Woman's costume (I'm just saying)

__Rating: __

Rated: PG-13

__Price: __$20 for DVD; $30 for Blu-ray or two-disc DVD set; $15 for download

Images courtesy Warner Bros.

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