Black Panther Cert 12A 2hrs 14mins
The stunning trailer for Black Panther was one of the most exciting things I saw in the whole of 2017. But now along comes the completed film itself, released on Tuesday in time for half-term and, at least on one level, a distinct sense of anti-climax sets in.
At times it feels wordy and slow, at others too complex for its own good. As for the visual style that made such an impact on me in the trailer, there turns out to be little here that we haven’t seen either before or more convincingly done elsewhere.
And yet Black Panther, directed and co-written by the young American film-maker Ryan Coogler, burns with an energy and anger that make it impossible to ignore and easy to enjoy. Coogler’s last two films – Fruitvale Station, about the killing of a young black man by a white police officer, and Creed, the Rocky reboot about a black boxer triumphing against the odds – both championed black issues, and Black Panther, the first Marvel film to place a black superhero centre stage, is no different.
With its echoes of apartheid-era racism and modern-day parallels with gang violence, this is one superhero film that definitely punches above the normal crash-bang-wallop weight
With its echoes of apartheid-era racism (listen out for an uncompromising Afrikaans accent from Andy Serkis), references to slavery and colonialism, and modern-day parallels with gang violence, this is one superhero film that definitely punches above the normal crash-bang-wallop weight. The Marvel Cinematic Universe just got a whole lot more interesting.
It’s got a lot more complicated too, with Coogler and co-writer Joe Robert Cole clearly struggling with a complex ‘origins’ story, a host of new characters and the possibly unwise decision to confront the Black Panther with not just one evil enemy but two. Perhaps inevitably, there’s an episodic quality, a pattern of highs and lows to what ensues.
Chadwick Boseman, star of Marshall and the James Brown biopic Get On Up, plays T’Challa, the new king of the little-known state of Wakanda.
Chadwick Boseman, star of Marshall and the James Brown biopic Get On Up, plays T’Challa, the new king of the little-known state of Wakanda.
Being a part-time superhero comes with the regal territory here, apparently, with his superpowers bestowed by an exotic, heart-shaped, purple flower.
Wakanda is little known because its inhabitants like it that way, preferring that the rest of the world believe them to be an impoverished, Third World republic rather than know the truth.
Which is that Wakanda, having been blessed with seemingly limitless amounts of the rare metal vibranium (Captain America’s shield is made of the all-powerful, hugely valuable stuff), is actually the most technologically advanced society in the world.
Black Panther – clunky at times and certainly not perfect but important, more interesting than it initially appears, and with the definite promise of better things to come
But its magnetic, levitating trains, towering skyscrapers and super-fast flying saucers are all hidden by giant cloaking devices. In the outside world no one even knows Wakanda is there… or very nearly no one. Which, of course, is where the first baddie, the avaricious and evil Ulysses Klaue (Serkis), comes in.
Serkis, seizing a rare opportunity to grace a film himself rather than through motion-capture, is wickedly good, but elsewhere we’re initially struggling with an abundance of supporting characters. For starters, there are an awful lot of women in T’Challa’s life: his mother (Angela Bassett), his technologically gifted sister, Shuri (Letitia Wright), his spy and potential love interest, Nakia (12 Years A Slave star Lupita Nyong’o), and his main bodyguard (Danai Gurira).
It’s symptomatic of a screenplay that can’t quite meet the narrative demands of them all that the sparky, Guyana-born but British-raised Wright pretty much blows the Oscar-winning Nyong’o off the screen.
The avaricious and evil Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) Seizing a rare opportunity to grace a film himself rather than through motion-capture, is wickedly good
Elsewhere, home audiences can look out for man-of-the-moment Daniel Kaluuya, the Oscar-nominated star of Get Out, as one of T’Challa’s tribal rivals, and for Martin Freeman, somewhat miscast as an American CIA agent.
But 52 years after Black Panther first appeared in comic form, ten years after Iron Man got Marvel back up and running cinematically, and three years after the widespread accusations of a ‘whitewash’ at the 2015 Oscars, it’s thrilling to see an almost entirely black cast leading a big-budget Hollywood superhero film.
Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years A Slave) as Nakia left. Guyana-born but British-raised Letitia Wright is excellent as T’Challa’s technologically gifted sister Shuri
I loved Ludwig Göransson’s Africa-inspired but cliché-avoiding percussive musical score; I liked Boseman, who, after a cameo in Captain America: Civil War, finally gets the chance to make the part his own; while Coogler regular Michael B Jordan is so strong and morally ambiguous as the second baddie, Erik Killmonger, that he threatens to unbalance the whole production.
But that’s Black Panther – clunky at times and certainly not perfect but important, more interesting than it initially appears, and with the definite promise of better things to come.
SECOND SCREEN
The Mercy (12A)
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The 15:17 To Paris (15)
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Tad The Lost Explorer And The Secret Of King Midas (U)
Rating: 
Back in 1969, the first single-handed, non-stop, round-the-world yacht race was won by the great Robin Knox-Johnston, but even as he was crossing the finish line at Falmouth the public’s imagination was being fired by the apparently sterling efforts of Donald Crowhurst, a little-known amateur who had left last in his untried wooden trimaran, Teignmouth Electron, but who, if his position was to be believed, now stood every chance of coming second.
But his position couldn’t be believed, as a new dramatisation of his voyage, The Mercy reveals. Crowhurst has gone down in history as a cheat who couldn’t face failure. But the film repositions him more as a victim, initially of his own misplaced optimism but soon of a sponsor with a claim on his house and a ruthless press agent who never let the facts get in the way of a good story.
Colin Firth slowly gets to grips with Crowhurst’s complex character, aided and abetted by Ken Stott as the sponsor, Rachel Weisz (below) as his wife and David Thewlis as PR man Rodney Hallworth. The result feels a little small in its scale but is nicely acted, authentic-feeling and quietly moving despite a sense that facts, on occasion, may have made way for fiction.
Rachel Weisz plays Colin Firth’s wife in the nicely acted, authentic-feeling and quietly moving film The Mercy
Clint Eastwood is the personification of American heroism, which presumably is what drew him to the story of the three young Americans who, in 2015, bravely prevented a terrorist attack on a high-speed train.
But it’s symptomatic of his laboured approach to The 15:17 To Paris that the now 87-year-old film-maker not only asks the men – Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlatos – to play themselves but begins their story at junior school, where they are brought together by that very American mix of God and guns. The result clearly aspires to be another United 93 but falls significantly short.
From the moment someone is tossed over the side of a boat while padlocked to a heavy suitcase, you suspect something has got lost in translation for the Spanish-made animated feature Tad The Lost Explorer And The Secret Of King Midas.
So it swiftly proves as this little-awaited sequel to a 2012 original delivers jokes that fall flat, over-sexualised visualisations of women, and the most annoying cartoon sidekick ever – a long-dead Peruvian mummy. Ghastly.