DC Saturdays #23 - Catwoman (2004)

There are some weeks when I really enjoy doing this blog. I might come across something I saw back in the day like the Richard Donner "Superman" films or the Tim Burton "Batman" films and fall in love with them all over again. Or I might find a really good film that I missed at the time like "Spiderman 2" or the first two "X-Men" films and really enjoy it. And then there's weeks like this where I have to review something that has a reputation for being a truly awful film but somehow even I find that I wasn't prepared for just how terrible. Films like "Daredevil", "Steel", "Hulk", "Ghost Rider", "Supergirl" and now "Catwoman"

"Catwoman" has a reputation for being one of the worst comic book tie-in films of all time and managed to sweep the board at the 2005 Razzie awards. You may remember it for the fact that Halle Berry who was in the title role (and after being one of the better things about the first two X-Men movies as storm you have to ask - what on earth was she thinking?!) actually turning up to collect her award in person and basically admitting that the film was an absolute pile of sh*te. And now we get to find out for ourselves. Truly, there is no God.

You know things aren't promising when the film gets off to a bad start by getting its main character's name wrong. As anyone with a passing acquaintance with the Batman films will tell you, Catwoman's name is Selina Kyle. Except not in this film where she's known as Patience Phillips (and I have to ask, what kind of a stupid name is that?!). Patience is a graphic designer for a cosmetics company called Hedare and works for an arrogant uncaring boss George Hedare who has her working on a package design for the company's new anti-aging cream Beau-line. The only crumb of comfort is that she shares an office with a stereotype hyperactive friendly gay guy and her best friend Sally who's basically a walking "Sex And The City" bad stereotype.

Patience also has a crush on a police officer, Tom Lone, who she meets when he helps her down from a window ledge at her apartment block after she gets stuck out there trying to rescue a stray cat. Feminists be warned, you may well be tempted to put a brick through your television screen after watching the opening 15-20 minutes of this film such is the degree of lazy stereotyping here and I honestly wouldn't blame you.

Having been asked to redesign the packaging at the last moment by George, Patience ends up working till midnight the following night and because there are no drivers working that late, takes the documents over to the company lab herself. However, while there she ends up eavesdropping on a conversation between George's spurned wife Laurel (formerly the company's main model and played by Sharon Stone) and chief lab scientist Slavicky who has concerns that the Beau-Line cream is toxic and could have dangerous side effects. Laurel, however, has been using it for years and doesn't see what the problem is.

Unfortunately, klutz that she is, Patience trips over something on her way out leading Laurel to send the security guards after her. She attempts to escape through a water pipe but the guards simply seal it off and flush her out, blasting her into the lake from about 100 feet up and killing her. However, as she's washed up on the shore, the stray cat from earlier in the film appears again with a bunch of its buddies and they surround her while doing the alleycat chorus thing which causes Patience to be resurrected. Except that she's now started to exhibit cat-like characteristics - sleeping on shelves, eating tuna out of cans, walking along the back of the sofa, hissing at dogs, crapping in a litter tray etc. (okay, I may have just made the last one of those up)

Sacked from her job after failing to hand the designs in on time (but earning the respect of the rest of the office after telling George to go swivel), Patience is visited by the cat again who takes her to its owner, an Egyptologist names Ophelia Powers. Ophelia explains to Patience that she has been resurrected as a Catwoman with superpowers.

This leads to her exploring the city at night dressed in black leather (initially a jacket and jeans but later into what can best be described as a half-catsuit because, hey, nothing says "strong female lead" like dressing her up as though she's just spent the evening working down the red light district) in a series of sequences featuring CGI so bad and dated it looks like it was done on a Windows 95 PC. Have I mentioned how painfully bad this film is yet? Well, I'll do so again - this film is painfully bad.

Patience is also continuing to build her relationship with Tom who's starting to get suspicious that she may be hiding something especially when she helps him save a group of kids from a collapsing ferris wheel on a date at the local fairground. The pair come to blows after Catwoman's enquiries lead her back to Laurel who informs her that George was probably the one behind all the subterfuge with Beau-Line and trying to off both Patience and Slavicky (whose body Catwoman discovers at the lab making her chief suspect). Catwoman tracks George down to the opera where he's taken a younger model from the company on a date but the police turn up before she can question him leading her to have a brief skirmish with Tom backstage before escaping.

Returning to the Hedare mansion for a debrief, Catwoman discovers that Laurel has murdered George for his infidelity and has placed the blame on her so that she can take out her two biggest headaches in one go. Patience ends up arrested by Tom when she returns to her apartment and is taken in for questioning then put in a cell. However, the cat who resurrected her earlier shows up and she manages to escape by contorting herself and squeezing through the cell bars.

Tom has also headed back to the Hedare mansion after realising there were some inconsistencies in Lauren's story. She tries to shoot him but Catwoman turns up and, after beating up her goons, the pair have a showdown. However, Laurel has used so much Beau-Line that her skin is diamond-hard and she's pretty much indestructible. However, Catwoman has diamond claws which manage to scratch her face leading to her suddenly aging rapidly. She falls out of a window and after seeing herself reflected in the glass, opts to fall to her death rather than take Catwoman's hand to safety.

The film ends with Patience and Tom deciding that they can't really continue their relationship and Patience going back to her Catwoman ways by walking off into the full moon wiggling her arse a lot. Yup...no exploitation here, honest guv.

We've had some really dreadful films while doing this DC blog but "Catwoman" has officially managed to knock "Steel" off the golden turkey spot after just three episodes. I dunno what the worst thing about this film is - the fact that it gets even the most basic things about the character, like her name, wrong? The script which is so inept that an actual cat could probably have done a better job at writing it (a point I made to my two when they started gathering round the TV during the "alleycat chorus" resurrection scene) The hideously dated CGI which just looks cheap? The supremely wooden acting? Well, all of those are bad but I think the thing that gets under my skin about it is that it purports to be a film with a strong ass-kicking female lead but it's basically just an excuse to shove Halle Berry in what can best be described as a lapdancer's Catwoman costume for an hour and a half and get her to crawl about on all fours and wiggle her arse a lot while most of the female characters in it are characterised as either clueless ditzes or jealous harridans. In an age where characters like Captain Marvel and Black Widow (even DC's recent Wonder Woman film, despite its flaw of being a bit over-long for its own good) have shown that it is possible to write in female superhero leads who can go toe-to-toe with the male ones without having to rely on their T&A as their defining characteristic, it makes films like this just seem horribly dated and suspect. I mean, I know you could arguably say the same about "Elektra" which came out about the same time but for all its faults, at least there Jennifer Garner's character gave you the impression that she was tough and independent and could look after herself (plus it had fight sequences that actually looked half-decent unlike this stinker.

Unsurprisingly the Catwoman franchise was mercifully killed off after this first effort and Halle Berry would go back to making decent films again with the character resurfacing (this time played by Anne Hathaway) in "The Dark Knight Rises" in 2010 and handled much better. Unless you're massively into self-torture though, give this abomination a very wide berth.

FINAL RATING: 🐱🐱 (2/10)

CURRENT DC FILM TABLE

1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Road To Perdition (2002) (7/10)
7. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
8. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
9. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
10. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
11. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
12. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
13. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) (4/10)
14. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
15. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
16. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
17. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
18. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
19. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
20. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
21. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
22. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
23. Steel (1997) (2/10)
24. Catwoman (2004) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Constantine hits the big screen and gets moved from Manchester to Los Angeles with Keanu Reeves in the main role. Erm...

DC Saturdays #22 - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003)

As I mentioned in a couple of reviews before the blog went on hiatus, the time between the Tim Burton and Christopher Nolan Batman incarnations was a bit of a rough one for DC with no official films appearing under the banner between 1997 and 2004. Because of this, I've added a couple of films from the intervening years where the links were somewhat tenuous. We looked at "Road To Perdition" in the last blog before the break and in the first one back, it's time to give "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" a spin.

LXG is a bit of an is-it-isn't-it film when it comes to DC as it was the brainchild of legendary Brit comic author Alan Moore. At the time, DC had picked up a few of Moore's works including LXG although it would only stay with the company for a very short time before Moore took it elsewhere. However, as the film came out around this time I'm gonna say that yes it does just to say count as a DC film and therefore it's going in. Incidentally, the relationship between Moore and DC would prove to be something of a strained one as we'll see in reviews of "V For Vendetta" and "Watchmen" in future episodes of this blog.

The most notable thing about LXG is that it was Sean Connery's final film before he retired from acting a year or two later. However, therein lies the first issue with the film - because the directors blew so much of their budget hiring Connery, they were forced to pad out the rest of the cast with much less well-known actors. You may remember Jason Fleming who plays Dr Jekyll here as being the Jason from "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" who didn't go on to star in a number of no-brainer action films and date Kelly Brook while Stuart Townsend who plays Dorian Gray was previously in the under-rated '90s Brit comedy "Shooting Fish" with Kate Beckinsale. Of the others, Naseeruddin Shah (Captain Nemo) is apparently a very famous actor in his native India, Peta Wilson (Mina Harker) was in the starring role in the '90s series "La Femme Nikita" (which I honestly don't even remember) and Tony Curran (The Invisible Man) has popped up briefly in this blog playing the Scottish vampire Priest in "Blade 2".

LXG starts off in Africa in 1899 where Connery's character Alan Quartermain is chilling out in a bar when he's approached by a British government agent, Sanderson Reed, who informs him that a master criminal called the Fantom has been causing chaos by breaking into the Bank of England to steal structural drawings of Venice (?) and seeking to place the blame on Germany then kidnapping German scientists and trying to place the blame on Britain and the government needs him to help sort the whole problem out. Quartermain initially refuses until the Fantom's henchmen storm the bar and kill his drinking buddy Nigel. After he sees them off, he agrees to Reed's request.

Back in London, Quartermain is introduced to M who is putting together a collection of superheroes known as the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As well as Quartermain, the group currently includes the Invisible Man aka gentleman thief Rodney Skinner, vampiress Mina Harker (a former associate of Van Helsing) and Captain Nemo who pilots the Nautilus submarine. I should point out that here is where the film deviates from the comic books quite substantially and was the main cause of Moore's angst with it - in the comic books Harker is known as Mina Murray and is the leader of the group. But I guess with Connery the only big name star on board, they had to do a bit of a rewrite.

The group's first errand is to travel to Limehouse Docks and the house of Dorian Gray who M wants to recruit as the team's fifth member. Gray, similar to the book, is immortal due to a portrait of him that ages instead of him which is currently missing and we find out that he's a former lover of Harker's and actually taught Quartermain when the latter was a youngster. However, the team are ambushed in Dorian's library by the Fantom and his goons resulting in an actually-pretty-awesome fight sequence. They're aided and abetted by a young American soldier of fortune Tom Sawyer who Quartermain agrees to take on as the team's sixth member despite Gray's protestations.

Heading across the channel to Paris in the Nautilus, the team capture the monster Edward Hyde in Paris after Quartermain shoots him with a tranquiliser dart. Back on the sub, he transforms back into Henry Jekyll and agrees to join the League as its seventh member in exchange for receiving a pardon for his crimes.

The next half hour or so is dedicated to the team sailing across to Venice to intercept the Fantom who M has told them is planning to set off bombs there and blow the city up. Unfortunately this is where the plot starts to stall a bit as we've got six new characters in a short space of time with no background info on them. Unfortunately it just feels like the scriptwriters didn't really give this a lot of thought and so what could have been a good opportunity to flesh the characters out a bit is mostly wasted on sequences of Quartermain and Sawyer chatting to each other and not really saying anything of interest. We also discover that there is a mole on board as one of the team has nicked one of Jekyll's antidotes and also taken photos of the Nautilus' control room. As Skinner is a difficult man to find at the best of times due to his invisibility and also has a past as a thief, the suspicion falls on him.

We finally get to Venice where the Fantom has set the bombs off just as the League roll into town. Sawyer, Harker and Gray set off on a white knuckle ride through the streets to try and defuse them before the damage sinks the city (including a cool sequence where Harker turns into a cloud of bats to dispose of a group of henchmen) and Quartermain stalking down the Fantom who, it turns out, is M. Okay, erm, interesting twist to have the big villain reveal about halfway through the film... It also turns out that M is Sherlock Holmes' old adversary Moriarty under another alias which is decidedly random.

Back at the sub, it turns out that Gray, not Skinner, is the traitor as he gets back before the others, shoots Nemo's deputy Ishmael and commandeers the sub's escape pod to make his getaway. He leaves behind a phonograph message for the rest of the team when they return explaining that he and M are planning to start a world war between the superpowers and have taken artefacts which will allow them to clone the members of the League with superhuman powers (a vial each of Skinner and Harker's blood plus one of Jekyll's potions).

Gray has also rigged the Nautilus with depth charges and attempts to sink it but Jekyll saves the day by turning into Hyde, sealing off the flooded parts of the vessel and then punching a hole in the side of the sub to drain the water out (yeah, I know, wouldn't that cause it to sink anyway? Probably best to suspend our disbelief here). The team also get a radio message from Skinner who has stowed away with Gray in the escape pod and promises to lead the team to the bad guys' HQ.

This turns out to be in Mongolia and sets the scene for an ambitious but incredibly clumsily executed confrontation which tries to tie up storylines with characters who haven't really been properly developed in the first place and just ends up a bit of a mess. The team end up battling a bunch of M's goons who have the same powers as them (so there's an Invisible Man in Sanderson Reed and an evil Hyde who's eventually defeated by the good one. Harker and Gray have a swordfight which ends with the vampiress pinning Dorian to the wall with her sword and then uncovering his picture thus causing him to turn into a skeleton and crumble into dust.

Sawyer and Quartermain manage to pursue M to his hideout but the latter is fatally stabbed by Moriarty as he shoots an invisible Reed. M makes a run for it but Sawyer uses the crackshot skills he learned from Quartermain earlier in the film to shoot him dead and leaving his world domination plans to sink into an icy lake.

Quartermain is buried next to his dead son in Kenya, where the film started. The remaining five members of the League agree to continue their alliance into the 20th century to help protect the world. After they leave, a witch doctor randomly turns up and performs a ceremony at Quartermain's grave causing a lightning bolt to strike the rifle that Sawyer had left on top of there and presumably bringing him back to life for a sequel which, as it turns out, never happened.

"The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" just feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity really and it's a shame because the idea of a sort of steampunk proto-Avengers definitely had bags of potential and the action scenes are actually pretty good on the whole. Unfortunately, it suffers from a stop-start plot which starts off promisingly but then just starts to drag and drag and some twists which are...well, not quite logical to put it kindly. The worst thing though is the ending - it just feels like the scriptwriters gave themselves way too many leads to tie up with the consequence that it just ends up tripping over its own feet time after time, not helped by the fact that not enough attention has really been paid to developing or making us care about the principal characters.

I really think LXG is ripe for a reboot if someone could put the time aside. With a bit more faithfulness to the comic books (ie having Harker/Murray as the main character rather than Quartermain), more thought going into the script and if they can get a decent cast involved (the ones here try their hardest with the limited pickings they're given but I don't think it's any coincidence that none of them have really done anything of note since) there could be a really good film of this series waiting to be made if it's done right. Unfortunately though, I can't really recommend this version of it unless you're a  die-hard fan of Mr Connery and are desperate to see his final film.

FINAL RATING: 🎩🎩🎩🎩 (4/10)

CURRENT DC FILM TABLE

1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Road To Perdition (2002) (7/10)
7. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
8. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
9. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
10. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
11. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
12. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
13. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
14. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) (4/10)
15. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
16. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
17. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
18. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
19. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
20. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
21. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
22. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
23. Steel (1997) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Time to hold our noses as we break out the kitty litter to review Catwoman...

DC Saturdays #21 - Road To Perdition (2002)

As we mentioned on last week's blog, in the years around the millennium, a series of critically slaughtered movies (notably the two Joel Schumacher Batman films and "Steel") had left the film arm of DC pretty much broken and it would be a long time before any further film tie-ins occurred for any of the group's main characters. However, before the DC universe returned properly with 2004's "Catwoman" (a film so bad it's a wonder it didn't send the company back under for another seven years but more on that when we come to it), we did get a few "are they or aren't they?" films from DC spin-offs. Next week we'll be looking at "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" which didn't start out as a DC title but joined the franchise around the time the movie came out which makes it just about worthy of qualification in my opinion. Before that though came two other titles, 2005's "A History of Violence" and 2002's "Road To Perdition", both based on titles from DC offshoot Paradox and both very different from the rest of the DC canon.

We won't be covering the art house film "A History Of Violence" on this blog because the writers weren't actually even aware of the comic book's existence when the film was written (they based it on the novel that came afterwards) meaning it's not really a straight tie-in as such but "Road To Perdition" is pretty much directly based on the comic mini-series of the same name and so just to say qualifies here. When it was released in 2002, this tale of a fugitive Irish mafia hitman and his son on the run from the mob was widely acclaimed and even saw Tom Hanks add yet another "Best Actor" Oscar to his extensive collection. Let's see how it's held up in the intervening 16 years...

The film is set in 1931, the height of the Depression, in Illinois and is based around the story of gangster Michael Sullivan (Hanks) who works as a hitman for his adoptive father John Rooney (Paul Newman) along with his stepbrother and Rooney's biological son Connor (a pre-Bond Daniel Craig). The film opens with Sullivan, his wife Annie and their two sons Michael Jr and Peter attending the wake of McGovern, one of Rooney's associates. However, McGovern's brother Finn uses his speech to make some pointed remarks about John causing Michael and Connor to cut him short and escort him to his ride home. Afterwards, John advises his boys to go and see Finn the next night to discuss his grievances.

Unbeknownst to Sullivan however, Michael Jr stows away in the back of his car as he and Connor are driving to their rendezvous. The previous night, Michael Jr and Peter had been discussing what their dad's job actually was and the former decides to find out. When the car reaches the brewery where the meeting is taking place, Michael Jr sneaks up to the door and watches the discussion through the crack in the middle.

However, the conversation breaks down and Connor's temper gets the better of him and he shoots Finn with Michael gunning down McGovern's two hitmen before they can draw their guns. Escaping from the brewery the pair find Michael Jr and swear him to secrecy.

The next day, Connor and Michael are summoned before Rooney's board with the former being made to apologise, much to his anger, by John. Afterwards, he takes Michael to one side and apologises properly before asking him to visit a speakeasy to conduct some business for him that night. Meanwhile, Michael Jr, still upset over the previous night's events, ends up getting into a fight at school and is kept back to do detention.

Sullivan heads to the speakeasy and hands the note to its owner Calvino. When Calvino suddenly draws his gun, he realises he's been set up and quickly dispatches the speakeasy owner and his henchman. Getting back in his car he floors it home, arriving at the same time as Michael Jr arrives home from school but they're too late - Connor has been to the house and shot Annie and Peter dead. Realising that they're wanted men, the pair go on the run.

Driving through the night to Chicago, Sullivan visits Frank Nitti, a conduit between Rooney and Al Capone and asks him if the Chicago mob boss is looking for men at the moment. Unfortunately Nitti is aware of what's happened back in Rock Island and is unable to help him. After Michael leaves, we see Nitti speaking to John and Connor in the back room and the trio reluctantly agree to put a hit out on Sullivan.

The hitman they recruit is Harlen Maguire (Jude Law), a crime scene photographer by day who lives a double life as a mercenary by night. Not realising he's in trouble, Sullivan opts to head to a town called Perdition on the coast (hence the film name) to leave Michael Jr to live with Annie's sister Sarah. He calls her after Annie's funeral but unbeknown to him, Maguire has infiltrated the ceremony and manages to trace the call by dialling the operator.

Maguire catches up with Sullivan a few hours later at a diner on the highway. The pair initially make conversation but, realising something's up, Sullivan escapes through the toilet window, slashing Maguire's tyres on the way out to stop him chasing them.

Angry that his old associates are still trying to kill him, Sullivan comes up with a scheme to get back at Rooney by holding up a series of banks (using Michael Jr as his getaway driver) and forcibly withdrawing the mob's assets from each one with the intention of using the money as a trade-off to get them to reveal where Connor is hiding so he can go round and finish his business by killing him. Does his plan succeed? Ah-ah, only so many spoilers I'm giving for this one...

"Road To Perdition" is a bit of a funny one - certainly it's very unlike pretty much anything else we'll cover in this blog. Critically acclaimed at the time, it's since become a bit of a Marmite film with some claiming it lives up to the hype and others writing it off as a disappointment. Me? I thought it was decent enough. Hanks, Law, Craig and Newman are all as good as you'd expect here and the plot is certainly gripping enough with a few unexpected twists and turns thrown in. The only slight problem is it sometimes feels as though the characters aren't as clearly defined as you want them to be and the interaction sequences feel a little stunted in places, especially between the Sullivans. But while it's not quite an all-time classic it's still an enjoyable big screen epic to waste a couple of hours to and I'd certainly give it a moderate recommendation.

The film did well enough at the box office and, ever so slowly, DC films started to crawl out of the woodwork once again culminating with 2005's "Batman Begins" which properly announced their return to the silver screen. However, as we'll see from the next set of reviews, unfortunately we've got a few misfires to deal with between now and then...

FINAL RATING: 🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫🔫 (7/10)

CURRENT DC FILM TABLE

1. Batman Returns (1992) (9/10)
2. Batman (1989) (8/10)
3. Superman (1978) (8/10)
4. Superman 2 (1980) (8/10)
5. Batman (1966) (8/10)
6. Road To Perdition (2002) (7/10)
7. Batman Forever (1995) (6/10)
8. Superman 3 (1983) (5/10)
9. Swamp Thing (1982) (5/10)
10. The New Wonder Woman (1975) (5/10)
11. Superman and the Mole Men (1951) (5/10)
12. The Flash 2 - Revenge Of The Trickster (1991) (4/10)
13. The Flash 3 - Deadly Nightshade (1991) (4/10)
14. Wonder Woman Returns (1977) (4/10)
15. The Flash (1990) (4/10)
16. Wonder Woman (1974) (3/10)
17. Batman & Robin (1997) (2/10)
18. The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) (2/10)
19. Superman 4 - The Quest For Peace (1987) (2/10)
20. Justice League of America (1997) (2/10)
21. Supergirl (1984) (2/10)
22. Steel (1997) (2/10)

NEXT WEEK: Back to the "proper" superhero films with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...