Black Panther Review - A Half Baked Experience

Let me start by saying, Black Panther is not a bad film, it's just the wrong one. Not the one that we as viewers needed to see. Because the visually breathtaking film has enough story to fill its runtime (almost all of its runtime, but I digress), doesn't mean that it's written very well.

While watching director Ryan Coogler’s vision play out on screen, the Bollywood in me emerged. I saw glimpses of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat. SS Rajamouli’s Bahubali (especially in one scene) and the recurring theme of self righteousness which we have come to associate with heroes in Bollywood. Black Panther, Marvel’s latest film, has been associated with the “Black Lives Matter” movement that has been championed across the West. Coogler fails and massively succeeds in bringing this movement to perhaps the most mainstream platform there is.

Here, we have the fictional country of Wakanda. A country that is labelled third world by the ones surrounding it, but is actually massively ahead in technological advancements. Conflicts arise when the king’s brother has conflicting views on how to use these technological advancements and he is killed. What follows is the 2 hour 15 minute long revenge saga, Black Panther. Back to my Bollywood link. Remember in Sanjay’s Bajirao Mastani? Remember the robotic way in which a doe-eyed Mastani proclaimed her love for her Rao in seven different ways to many different people? Here, dialogues, especially from the side of villain Michael B. Jordan, are spoken not emoted. It doesn’t help that the actor is given clunky lines to propagate the movement itself. Never has subtlety felt this lame.

Jordan is honestly the weakest link in the film. His sub-par acting, coupled with thinly written dialogues and his rather odd Weeknd inspired hairdo is really a shame. Because this isn’t a thinly written character. In the hands of a better actor, Jordan’s powerful and moving inspiration for villainy is a nuance in an otherwise overcrowded film. The way that the little version of Jordan’s character walks up the stairs to his one-bedroom apartment, ever so casually, as if this is a norm. A rite of passage and now it is his turn is so beautiful, I almost teared up.

And that is the worst part about Black Panther. There is so much to love in this film. Whether it is Chadwick Boseman, Angela Basset, Letitia Wright (my favourite actress on this ensemble), Luptia Nyong’o or even Martin Freeman, the entire cast is stellar and aided by fantastic visuals. In the same way that the Rajputs are shown as do no harm in Padmaavat, no citizen of Wakanda (except Daniel Kaluya) really ever crosses to the evil side. Unfortunately there is no Khilji here to make up for the menace lacking on the other side. The film, champions black rights above it all. Or at least tries to.

But Black Panther never made me weep in the way that numerous critics had raved about. Its sumptuous visuals, its operatic utopian future and obviously gorgeous work by both the VFX and acting team were glorious. But, it fails to rise to the point that I expected it to. Powered by acting performances, this superhero film seems like a bit of a slog. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, it takes its sweet time to cover very little substance (like Bhansali’s Padmaavat), and the pace is too slow for my taste. For the first act of the film, it stays engaging, smart, whip-like, and the narrative engrosses you in this fictional land. The costumes and the authenticity seem real.

In the second half of the second act, Jordan loses his grip on the film and Coogler on us. Action sequences seem rushed, abrupt, though still beautifully shot. An aide of Black Panther throughout is the whip-like lines that like the film itself, are problematic yet well-written. Common references like “What are thoose?” and the overuse of the term “homie” seems rather cheap of the director to ‘urbanise’ the film. What the Marvel producers and Coogler probably didn’t realise while making the film was that tricky situations such as these - race, religion, caste etc. - need to be handled with utmost caution.

At the end, I have never seen a film as polarising to me as a reviewer as Black Panther. Powered by the acting performances and the hilarity of SOME of the dialogues, I found it a mixed experience as a critic. As an MCU fan, though, this film will surely make you scream and shout (probably laden with Easter eggs) and I urge you to find a cinema close to you to watch it. As I said with Padman’s review last week, I can’t praise a film because of its intentions. Yes, Padman was a film bringing to light menstrual hygiene and yes, Black Panther brings to light the Black Lives Matter movement. But is a particularly well-written film? No. And therein lies the problem.

The film, to sum it up, has gorgeous visuals, high-tech stuff for lack of a better term, some earnest and some commercialised performances and some smart as a whip and some slobby writing. Though some may argue, I found the film a rather half-baked experience. Still, the nuance of that scene of normalcy brought some hope for a sequel. I hope the second one doesn’t take such a blatant approach to the matter and handles it more intricately. I think that Black Panther deserves a 2.5 star rating out of 5. And another half star for the acting performances. I’m going with 3 stars for Black Panther.