Really Surprised!

One of the best films i have seen

A Disappointing Continuation

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I'm coming to this party a little late.Debra Winger and Theresa Russell are well matched as female leads. Both are excellent with Theresa Russell as the polished, mysterious killer and Debra Winger as the ruffled FBI researcher in pursuit.There is an unlikely admiration and battle of wits between the two women as the cat and mouse game plays out across various locations. Each woman has their own motivation which is never fully revealed.The films also has a great supporting cast including Dennis Hopper and Nicol Williamson as unfortunate husbands and James Hong as Shin the private detective.The film works very well and is well paced right up until the ending which I found a little disappointing. There is a twist but I think they had a much better ending staring them right in the face but I suppose that wouldn't have been in the Hollywood style. What can I say I like my endings with a little more grit and not so happy. Nonetheless enough great performances to make this movie worth the watch.

It took me almost thirty years to see this movie. I probably should have waited another thirty.Black Widow is about a woman who marries wealthy men, kills them, and then inherits all their money. Then some lady who works for the FBI tries to catch her. A wild premise, I know. I'll give you a few minutes to digest that outrageous plot line. But seriously: what could have been a dark character study or Hitchcockian-suspense masterpiece simply dies on screen with an underdeveloped script and plot holes too gaping to overlook.Why does Catharine (Theresa Russell) repeatedly marry and bury wealthy older men when doing it just once would have left her enough cash to live the rest of her life in luxury? How could every law enforcement bureau miss Catharine's obvious poisoning of her victims and not even classify the deaths as homicides? Why does Alexandra (Debra Winger) become obsessed with nabbing Catharine only to launch the silliest, sloppiest investigation in law enforcement history? ("I don't really work for the newspaper- I freelance. Actually I'm trying to sell a piece to Cosmo") How does the detail-oriented Catharine not see Debra Winger's clueless federal agent a mile away? Why would she continue to marry and kill even AFTER she knows Alexandra's true identity? Are there really all-girl scuba classes in which women get to play lesbian by performing CPR on one another?And a word here on the homosexual overtones in the movie: they're poorly-constructed and entirely half-ass. We know absolutely nothing about Alexandra as a person except that she refuses to date. Debra Winger is no help by playing Alex as a comatose shell: she doesn't seem attracted to men OR women. If a movie is going to imply lesbianism there has to be more than two throwaway lines and a make-believe kiss. I feel sorry for the reviewers who have patted themselves on the back for catching the "deep subtext" of the gay implications: there isn't more here than meets the eyes, my friends. There's less.This brings us to the ending, which is so absurd as to be laughable: Alexandra is arrested and charged with the murder of Catharine's husband while Catharine struts like a peacock in front of attorneys and law enforcement officers, even going so far as to visit Alexandra in prison! Because, you know, doesn't everybody drop by the local jailhouse to say hey to their spouse's killer? The answer is no."Black Widow' is a sloppy potboiler-wannabe, a suspense-mystery with neither element to be found anywhere on screen. The film's only highlight is James Hong as a scuzzy heroin-addicted PI, a character dark and dirty enough to hold your interest. Otherwise this movie is two frozen-faced women doing things that the script tells them to. Feel free to miss it.GRADE: C-

This is a rather ordinary mystery/potboiler in which a game of cat-and-mouse is played between two women. I said it's ordinary because there really isn't much to distinguish it from other similar movies except that the two leads are women. The acting is serviceable, and no one really gives a breakout performance. The film's greatest weakness is probably in the writing. The film starts out strong, but it's as if the writers ran out of ideas when it came to the final act. The pacing slows down a lot (and wasn't even perfect to begin with, given all of the time lapses) and the story begins to focus on a love triangle that really isn't compelling at all. Some lesbian/homoerotic tension is hinted at and, as if to give the perverts in the audience something to guffaw at, culminates in one of the quickest and most awkward kisses I've ever seen. They also don't treat the women in the film very kindly either, particularly the two leads. The only type of independent women they have are either manipulative bitches or hard-working women without much time for romantic endeavors, and both of them are presented as sex objects throughout the entire running time. Debra Winger's character is of the second type and is constantly subjected to crude comments and unwanted sexual advances, while Theresa Russell is the other type, who sees marriage as the pinnacle of her life even if she uses it to her own nefarious purpose. There are some glorified cameos by Dennis Hopper and Nicol Williamson which are entertaining. It's too bad that they weren't in the film more, but they do elevate the material somewhat in their limited screen time. Overall, I'd say this is about two thirds of a decent movie, despite the implausibility of it all.

I had seen Body Heat from 1981 with the similar femme fatale theme and that film just comes to my mind after seeing Black Widow on TV tonight.Actually Black widow tries to copy some elements from the earlier film with very little success. I can give this film 1 point for high production values, 1 point for the score and 1 for good sets. That's just about it and it's such a shame that if this film had had a really good intelligent script, the outcome could have been much better.The film's actually really dumb and there's plenty of things that make very little sense. The pacing is actually so dull that nothing seems to happen in it for the first hour. It's just tough to watch when everything is so obvious from the very beginning to the very end. It's like watching a daytime soap opera that never ends.The main character's quite tame and uninteresting just like everything else in this film. Plot twists in the end of the film are just a little too late to save the film. It appears that there was very little substance but it still had to be made to last 102 minutes.Save yourself from an obvious disappointment and watch The Body Heat instead. It's got very similar story and it's the original.