Black Widow

OK, here it is. What a stylish picture. What attractive performers. What a crock. I cannot understand how. this movie gathered the reviews it did. Things like "best thriller this year." (Oh yeah, well check out “Dead O Winter”) This is the last word in the implication game. Implied lust. Implied violence. Implied motivation. It is, as we said, and implied movie. Beautiful people move around in beautiful surroundings. Kind of like a travelogue. But nothing anybody ever does is ever explained, and there's not much point to a mystery movie unless the mystery is solved now, is there? Bob Rafelson directed, and quite well, might I add. The photography is lush and beautiful, the locations gorgeuous, the performances good, the performers, as mentioned, highly attractive (especially Theresa Russell, who looks great). The only thing missing is a reason why this movie was ever made. It's not that it's unpleasant to watch; indeed, it is quite painless.

But that is the best thing that can be said about it. It never scared me, never thrilled me, never turned me on, never really interested me. Things happen or don't happen, significant looks are exchanged, and you wind up wondering if you actually saw a movie. Towards the end, I began to wonder how they were going to wrap everything up in what was undoubtedly the short time they had left. Simple: they just didn't bother to do it at all. The ending was completely unsatisfying; the good guys won, but there was no emotional release when it happened, probably because we didn't care enough about any of the characters to care what happened to them. That's a bit problematic for a movie. Not only do we never understand the villainess, we never understand the heroine either. Are they supposed to be merely different sides of the same coin or something? That's implied, like everything else, but never confirmed. Was all this to conceal the fact that the screenwriter didn't really have any good ideas after all? In that case, the movie is quite appropriate for this Iranscam era--the entire picture takes the fifth.