Director: Pitof
Writer: John Brancato, Michael Ferris, John Rogers (Screenplay) Theresa Rebeck, John Brancato, Michael Ferris (Story)
Starring: Halle Berry, Benjamin Bratt, Sharon Stone, Lambert Wilson, Frances Conroy, Alex Borstein, Michael Massee
Plot: A shy woman, endowed with the speed, reflexes, and senses of a cat, walks a thin line between criminal and hero, even as a detective doggedly pursues her, fascinated by both of her personas.
Tagline – CATch Her In IMAX
Runtime: 1 Hour 44 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Verdict: Just Bad
Story: Catwoman starts with aspiring artist Patience Phillips (Berry) who works for the Hedare cosmetic company in advertisement, Laurel (Stone) is stepping down as the face of the company, while her husband George (Wilson) is planning for the future. When Patience tries to make a deadline, she overhears the side effects of the latest product, she is targeted by security leaving her dead.
Patience doesn’t stay dead, with the cats bringing her back to life with heighted sense. As Patience’s tries to remember what happened that night, she is left to learns that she has been chosen to be a Catwoman and uses her new powers to fight crime before setting her targets on her former employers.
Thoughts on Catwoman
Characters – Patience Phillips is the woman that dreams of more from her life, works too much to get anything else out of her life until she finds herself murdered by her bosses for learning a secret. Bought back to life, Patience has new skills ones that make her a threat to anybody that crosses her path, becoming Catwoman and more confident in life. Tom is the cop that walks into Patience’s life, she wants to get to know her only for him to get caught up trying to understand the crimes of Catwoman. Laurel and George Hedare run the cosmetic company that Patience works for, they both hate each other and will do anything to cover up the truth about what is happening when they get targeted by Catwoman who wants to expose their greed.
Performances – This is a hard movie to criticize the actors for trying to do something with such a weak story or poorly directed movie, you can see Halle Berry try and makes something of Patience, while going way overboard with Catwoman side of thing. Benjamin Bratt is fine without getting much more to do, while Sharon Stone does what she can with the villainous role.
Story – The story here follows a nice shy quiet lady who gets killed by her employers only to get resurrected by the cats that turn her into catwoman who will help fight crime and take down her evil bosses. In the early 2000s comic book movies were just starting to become a major thing, pre-Marvel explosion on the scene, we saw studios trying to bring different characters to center stage, Catwoman made sense as a decision because it would bring a female lead to the world, sadly the story is told so badly it just doesn’t help the genre, it is strange because the basics of the origin story are here and easy to see, though the dialog is appalling throughout. This will have to go down as one of the weak to poor stories in comic book history.
Action/Crime – The action in the film is awful to watch, with the fight sequences all looking like they are slow downed through each fight, with most of what we see coming off flashy over tough.
Settings – The film is set in New York which does help with the big company coming off filled with corruption and makes for the shadows a criminal or Catwoman could hide in.
Special Effects – The effects are bad here too, with most of the flying sequences only coming off this way to add some form of flash to the movement, though it looks terrible.
Scene of the Movie – Cats revive.
That Moment That Annoyed Me – The fights.
Final Thoughts – This is a poor excuse for a comic movie, the actors try their best, but the directing is just so bad.
Overall: Completely Awful.
