If you wanted to know how I was able to get into comic book films and comic books in general, look no further than the 2004 ‘Catwoman’ film. I’m not talking about because of it being a bad film and being “disappointed” in it and wanting to know more about the character properly but because this is my ultimate guilty pleasure comic book film aside from 2005’s ‘Elektra’.
I had to wait for it to come out on DVD of course. Despite what a lot of people had said about it at the time I actually rather liked it.
The story starts off with artist Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) who works as a artist at Hedare Beauty. One morning, Patience is summoned to George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and Laurel Hedare’s (Sharon Stone) office. George and Laurel have just been having an argument with each other; apparently Laurel is angry that her husband has been eying a new model and ignoring her of late.
They both stop arguing the moment Patience enters the office. George immediately tells her to sit and starts criticizing Patience’s artwork for an advertisement for a new beauty product. Patience is immediately upset about this; she had worked hard and had clearly followed George’s instructions properly.
Laurel sticks up for Patience though; she tells George to give Patience a second chance. “She’s good and you know it” Laurel tells him. George gives in and tells Patience that she has to redo it…and hand in her artwork at the factory by midnight the next day.
Patience is relieved that he has given her a second chance…and can’t wait to get out of the office sooner.
Later on that night, she’s woken up by the neighbours doing their nightly rock party and having the volume on too loud. She tries- and fails- to get them to turn down the volume and goes back to sleep…that is until she sees a suspicious-looking cat looking at her sitting on a motorbike.
Later that day, Patience is trying to redo her artwork when the same cat from the night before meows at her from the window. She’s understandably surprised about seeing the same cat from the night before. When Patience gets to the window though, the cat is gone. She’s confused; she’s pretty sure the cat was just there. Then she hears another meow; the cat is on another window above her.
“How did you get up there?” Patience asks, confused. After failing to persuade the cat to come backdown, she sighs; it looks like she has to climb out and get him. However, the ledge is small and slippery…and once she nearly falls.
Noticing Patience and thinking that she’s a jumper, cop Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), immediately stops his car and dashes up to rescue her as she’s clearly distressed because of the difficult situation that she’s now put herself in.
Despite what so many fans and critics alike said about ‘Catwoman’ when it came out, I had actually really enjoyed it and, like I said earlier, it was the film that got me into comics in the first place. Two of the things that I did enjoy about the film were the action scenes as well as the soundtrack.
As much as I want to praise it to the high heavens even after twenty years of being stood corrected as to who the Catwoman character actually is, the only issue I had with it was that the person behind Patience’s murder was revealed sooner rather than later even though Patience didn’t know who it was at first.
Sadly, despite that, ‘Catwoman’ and ‘Elektra’ were the two films that put studios off from doing female-led superhero films for many years because of how poorly received by the fans and critics they were until ‘Wonder Woman’ in 2016.
Still, I’d rather be watching this over any M-She-U nonsense any day. At least they were trying to be entertaining.
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