Os Vingadores Confidencial: Viúva Negra & Justiceiro

Recently added to Disney Plus, so now showing up near the top of my alphabetical trawl the films there, was this 2014 Anime film, that has decent action scenes, but very little else going for it.

Having initially worked against each other, and ruined a SHIELD operation, Frank Castle (Brian Bloom) is convinced to team up with Black Widow (Jennifer Carpenter) to locate a black-market weapons dealer named Caine (Kyle Herbert). They track him to the base of LEVIATHAN, a terrorist organisation and there come up against Elihas Starr (Grant George) a former SHIELD Agent, and lover of Widow, who was presumed dead.

I really struggled to maintain much interest in this. It's not without any merit, visually it's pretty good. It was the last thing produced with Madhouse Animation studios and their style is fun and dynamic. The story of this one is . . . Fine. Former agent assumed dead and now a villain is . . well, the Winter Soldier, I guess, but it's rehashed again here with the added twist that he was Black Widows lover at the time he was 'killed'. It actually does the thing that, realistically all Marvel movies should do, and calls in the rest of the heroes at the end to make sure that they don't fail. The story does have a reasonably sensible reason for keeping them out of it earlier though, which is a nice touch.

The vocal performances are really poor though. There are notable actors involved, such as Jennifer Carpenter, but there's a disconnect between the speech and the visuals (perhaps because it was designed around a Japanese performer?). There's also a lifelessness in the sound design, with no background noise in a lot of the scenes and the editing leaves a lot to be desired.

Because I'm watching everything on Disney Plus (or at least trying to) I'm sure I'll get around to the other collaborations with Madhouse, but I hope they're a little better finished than this one is.

In Kenichi Shimizu's animated film Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher, two Marvel antiheroes-Black Widow and Punisher-go on a mission against a mysterious organization. The animation in the movie is amazing, and the battle scenes are expertly coordinated. Popular heroes like Captain America and Iron Man are included to spice up the story. However, the movie lacks the depth and complexity of Marvel's more popular animated features, and it struggles with character development and storyline execution. A deeper investigation of the Marvel universe might be explored through the film's emphasis on Black Widow and Punisher, while several character motivations are left unexplored. The movie ignores a more interesting story in favor of action scenes.

Didn't really love this movie! But it was somehow interesting!

I was curious to see how Marvel would do a team up with Black Widow and Punisher, and especially curious to see how treat the Punisher. The movie starts off strong with Punisher doing what he does best: putting criminals in the ground with no remorse or mercy. The PG-13 definitely helps letting Frank Castle be his dual violent self, even if they don't show everything. However the movie fizzled out after this. The idea of having Shield forced to rely on normal humans like Widow and Punisher because the villains and have mind control device so if they got brainwashed, they'd cause untold damage was a good reason not to send in the full Avengers. The villain's rational and plans, the twist of who ultimately is behind everything, and the heroes way of overcoming this complication all feel like something straight from a Marvel team up/cross over comic line (preDisney anyway).

However the movie seems to forget this rule almost as soon as they introduce it as we then see both Punisher and Widow take on literal armored super soldiers with just their bare hands, defeating them with a single punch. So much for being "normal humans". There are also some big time plotholes that happen near the end when Black Widow plays her trump card to get the upper hand against all the super soldiers (I won't spoil it but the timing is just way too convenient). The dialogue at times is also just down right corny, painfully so. Idk if it's bad translations from Japanese to English or if somebody really thought these lines were deep, but man did it stink.

If it wasn't for the dialogue and some other faults, I'd give this a 6-6.5 out of 10, but no I'm giving it a 5 and even that may be a little generous.

I read some Punisher Comics and really liked them for their dark atmosphere and more or less discussing that whole thing about if it's OK or not to take justice in your own hands. And guess what? That was not a topic at all in this movie. And why did they have to team up Punisher and Black Widow? I have no idea, they don't really fit together... So the story is basically to stop the evil organization Leviathan from doing a very bad thing. The cool thing is that I liked the idea of this organization cause it was kinda vaguely described and fitted quite well as a placeholder for the Freemasons, Zionists elites, mafia or whoever really controls major crime stuff like weapon and human trafficking in our world. So the antagonist concept worked for me but the execution lacked. The movie starts OK but gets worse and worse, worst point the ending where suddenly some of the Avengers appear and they barely say a word and they are seriously unnecessary for the plot. So that was just a marketing thing I guess. Another thing is why does it have to be an anime style movie? I really don't know but the animation was well done so it's OK yet not the way it should be. This whole movie feels a lot like an 80s action movie and I think that's why I like it but it can't reach the emotional deepness and suspense that many DC animations reached so far - and I'm saying this as a true Marvel fan.