Review of Black Panther (2018) by Greatmartin — 16 Feb 2018

After recently seeing “Logan”, “Wonder Woman” and “The Ant-Man” I thought I should rethink the sci-fi movie genre after years of avoiding them and then today I did just that by going to see “Black Panther” and realized that I had been right from the beginning.

The movie, from opening to closing, is special effects whether between the actors or in the background or car chases, battle sequences, even in hand to hand combats. Talking about things like fights and car chases, why have one of each when you can have two? Also, let’s have two villains instead of one plus instead of an all-white cast with one, maybe two faces of color, here we have an all-black cast with two white faces.

As with other sci-fi movies this runs around 20 minutes too long but this, in a way, distinguishes itself by having 2or 3 more storylines, even going for Shakespearean plots here and there of kings and queens, family treachery and rivalry. All in all, at certain times it gets convoluted and you just have to shake your head and skip on to the next special effect.

Chadwick Boseman does a fine job as the Black Panther but Winston Duke who challenges Boseman and is another Black Panther at times, except for the shifting color of his costume, makes a good rival. The two scene stealers are Andy Serkis as an over the top villain and Letitia Wright as Boseman’s sister who can cracks jokes that are hilarious, that make you laugh out loud and can walk into any James Bond film as Q and steal that movie from Bond.

Also in the cast are Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, Daniel Kaluuyya, Lupita Nyong’o and Sterling K. Brown. It was directed by Ryan Coogler, who also wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, with a lo0t of help- from the editors Michael P. Shawver and Debbie Berman.

Along with Letitia Wright the musical score by Ludwig Goransson are the two outstanding features of the movie.