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Created Jul 08, 2013 11:22PM PST • Edited Mar 19, 2023 08:28AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Genre movies get no better than Black Widow, a noirish crime drama that delivers just what its title promises. A stunning woman seduces rich men to marry her, kills them, absconds with their fortunes and finds her next mark. You hardly want her caught, especially if you’re a guy and she’s not marrying you.

   Theresa Russell stuns, seduces and absconds with the best of them. Bacall and Gardner come to mind.
   As if she needs the help, she’s given near Double Indemnity dialog to deliver.

   Which part don’t you think a woman’s not up to, the seduction or the murder?

   Debra Winger takes her down, a Justice Department functionary who goes crusading like an investigative journalist with a badge. Second fiddle in the sexiness department to the sizzling Russell, she more than makes up for it with pluckiness. Basically she’s Brenda Starr, G-Woman.

   This female hero takes the cat-fight path by targeting another successful woman. Only here the other woman is a serial-killing, serial-monogamous ultra-MILF, who even she’s attracted to. They get a female bromance thing going in Hawaii. The movie climaxes on the Big Island after yet another big seduction.

   Black Widow – a directorial triumph – isn’t one of Bob Rafelson’s four IMDb Known Fors. It should be.

   Erotic above all, Black Widow averages out as pleasantly sordid. Russell & Winger directed by Rafelson. Yep.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Let’s compare the leading ladies.

   • Brave performance by Debra Winger. Stardom for Theresa Russell.
   • Russell’s acting – not up to her superior looks. Winger’s looks – not up to her superior acting.
   • Both – green eyed.

   Winger begins as a nerd, a big-data wannabe two decades too early, uneasy with men. Modeling the hero’s arc, she sports a perfect Hawaiian dress at the end, confidently attractive finally.

   Russell begins like a grown Cheerleading Captain, pretty as can be, bright and polished, crafty most of all. “How do two porcupines make love?” asks this femme fatale, hair up, in a tight sweater, very seductively. “Carefully.” Now that’s a great line delivered in a star making performance.

   Her husbands don’t stand a chance, not even Dennis Hopper.

   • Nicol Williamson think’s he’s a lucky son of a bitch. Just wait, twit.
   • Dennis Hopper thinks he’s a smart son-of-a-bitch. Not too smart for her.
   • Sami Frey is a handsome and sensitive Frenchman who owns a chunk of the Big Island, like George Clooney in The Descendants, only without the angst. Frey was still a handsome man when Black Widow was made in ’87, some two decades after he cavorted with a nubile Brigitte Bardot.

   Notable Secondaries

   • Terry O’Quinn as Debra Winger’s exasperated boss at the Justice Department.
   • James Hong as an irascible Honolulu P.I.
   • Diane Ladd and D.W. Moffett rattle around also.
   • Then there’s Herb the Poker Player. His big line? “These are my chips.” The actor uttering them? David Mamet. Wait … Mamet as an actor?

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Really Great 4.5

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Bob Rafelson and Ronald Bass are two pros perfectly capable of elevating genre material to the level of classic, which they did with Black Widow.

    They richly develop the characters of the protagonists for the first half of the film, finally having them meet in a diving class, where they practice buddy-breathing and mouth-to-mouth on each other. You don’t have to be a film theorist to anticipate how this tees up future conflict, which the film then expertly pays off.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Great 4.0

    Brilliant strings and winds while two characters grapple while scuba diving.

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Rafelson’s film has a wonderful sense of place, and not just one but several. At one point it appears to be a Seattle thriller, but later becomes a Hawaiian movie. I especially loved the Big Island scene where the Black Widow and her latest mark hike up to Kilauea while it’s in full eruption. Now that’s hot.

    Finally, the Justice Department office with green windows neatly defined the closed-in world of Debra Winger’s character.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.9

    Pleasantly sordid, with a descending Sex, Violence, Rudeness pattern. Erotic @ 3.5 on the Sex meter, Brutal @ 2.6 on Violence and merely Salty in terms of Rudeness @ 2.5.

17. Sex Erotic 3.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

    Nevermind the mild circumstantial surrealism. Of more interest is the underlying 1980s reality.

    • It takes days to get pics.
    • They use a carousel projector, which now seems like ancient history.
    • Debra Winger plays a big-data wannabe, some twenty years before it came to fruition. Instead she has to manually connect the dots.

    Finally, is a female bromance a flomance? Just asking.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.2

23. Biological Glib 1.5

24. Physical Natural 1.0