BLACK PANTHER MOVIE REVIEW ( BY ROUNAK SARKAR)

 

A jolt of a movie, “Black Panther” creates wonder with great flair and feeling partly through something Hollywood rarely dreams of anymore: myth. Most big studio fantasies take you out for a joy ride only to hit the same exhausted story and franchise-expanding beats. Not this one. Its axis point is the fantastical nation of Wakanda, an African Eden where verdant-green landscapes meet blue-sky science fiction. There, spaceships with undercarriages resembling tribal masks soar over majestic waterfalls, touching down in a story that has far more going for it than branding.

 

Chadwick Boseman is excellent as T'Challa, the Black Panther, great not just at flaunting the feline grace necessary for this particular superhero, but also at letting us into T'Challa's self-doubt, his current lack of readiness and the overall to-the-throne-born condescension he has trouble shaking off. Letitia Wright is flat-out fantastic as T'Challa's sister Shuri, sharp as a switchblade with quips pointy enough to match - she addresses the 'token white guy' with the word "Coloniser" - and deserves her own movies. As does Danai Gurira, who plays Okoye, a fiercely proud warrior woman who takes a James Bond style casino encounter and turns it briefly into the Crazy 88 sequence from Kill Bill before Mad Max-ing a car chase so that Black Panther can finally Ben Hur a tyre with his bare hands. You'll see what I mean. She slays.

 

Much of the film's appeal belongs to frequent Coogler collaborator Michael B Jordan who plays vicious villain Erik Killmonger, sculpted and smart and scarily seductive. With a name like that, I guess this actor will just keep having to step up and be MVP.


It is a gorgeous film, with cinematographer Rachel Morrison doing justice to the intricately fashioned Wakanda, dizzyingly taking us into a world more vibrant than we've seen. This is a movie with frames busy and beautiful enough to deserve an IMAX viewing. Ruth E Carter's costumes are enchanting, a mix of tradition and aggressively forward fashion, where neck-coils meet strikingly colourful armour. Coogler wears his influences on his sleeve, and the film doffs its hat at many touchstones of African culture as depicted in American cinema, from Coming To America to The Lion King.

 

Race matters in “Black Panther” and it matters deeply, not in terms of Manichaean good guys and bad but as a means to explore larger human concerns about the past, the present and the uses and abuses of power. That alone makes it more thoughtful about how the world works than a lot of mainstream movies, even if those ideas are interspersed with plenty of comic-book posturing. It wouldn’t be a Marvel production without manly skirmishes and digital avatars. Yet in its emphasis on black imagination, creation and liberation, the movie becomes an emblem of a past that was denied and a future that feels very present. And in doing so opens up its world, and yours, beautifully. It's easily one of the best movies of the marvel cinematic universe. It deserves 10/10 rating.