Witchblade

Young New York detective Sara Pezzini (Yancy Butler) is a chosen one. Clichéd, but true. In a pursuit of finding a murderer of her best childhood friend Sara gains a mystical amulet called the Witchblade, which has a ability of protecting her and arming her with a huge blade. At the same time a mysterious man is deeply interested about all this.

"Witchblade" is a TV movie based on a comic book by same name. As for TV movies go, Withcblade is actually quite enjoyable, though the smaller budget does show albeit the actors do carry the cliché ridden story quite well. This movie apparently was an introductory for a TV series with the same name and cast and that actually does show. It basically introduces all the characters and ends into a notion, that this all will continue and apparently it did.

This movie has some rather silly cuts and segments in it, like from some reason, probably just to add some more length into it, there are couple of short clips of Sara's untextured 3D model running. And some rather annoying music video style cuts and segments and a very, very silly training montage. I could go on and on, but I wont.

When you look under the bottom line, you'll get okay TV action movie. The script, even though not stellar, does work reasonably well, the actors are okay and the action is entertaining enough. And from a TV-series promo it's actually hard to ask anything more.

Regardless of other comments, Yancey is not the classic beauty queen, but she is plumb sexy. I have enjoyed her in Mann and Machine, and Brooklyn South, in addition to several movies. This is entertainment folks, not literature. Rate it for what it is. I would hope that someone has sense enough to make this a series. It sure would beat some of the garbage out there such as Dharma and Greg, etc, others of that genre.

I am a big fan of Witchblade. I have every single issue on my shelf. And I always thought, as far as comics go, Witchblade had the potential of being pretty good movie. It doesn't have people running around in spandex and it doesn't have 30 years of story line like Batman, Superman and X-Men have.

But I was skeptical when I heard this movie was being made. If you look at the most of the witchblade comic covers you will Sara Pezzini nearly naked with stratigicly places green vine stuff. So my many concerns were a)are they gonna end up casting some baywatch bimbo and b) how are they gonna do the Witchblade?

My fears were averted. Yancy is an excellent Sara and offered a great performance. Second, they simplified the Witchblade so it still has it's main purpose but not as much special effect. It sets up for a series perfectly, and I hope it becomes a series.

My only grip is Nottingham. If you have read the comic, nottingham is suppose to be tall dark and super sexy. The Nottingham in this film is tall and dark, but doesn't have the sexy. Oh well, Maybe they'll get rid of the hat in the series.

the best thing about the show was the low amount of digital effects they would use. Yes, they dropped in the Matrix freezes and did not overuse the bullet time effects. Yancy Butler not only looked a lot like the comic version, but her eyes and voice was exactly what the character needed. You could never put a blonde with a sqeaky voice in the same role.

If you have never seen the show, the location shots were beautiful. Plus the skyline shots with the Twin Towers hits close to the heart. I hate all those people who wanted to remove Tower visuals from movies in the DVD versions.

Oh, and the action and belly shirts were great.

Movies based on Comic Book adaptations seem to come in two categories: 1) Those that approach the material with a half-hearted, tongue-n-cheek attitude; not really taking the genre very seriously (Batman & Robin, Supergirl, Spawn) and 2) Those that approach the material with a serious, realistic and dark approach (X-Men, Rocketeer, & the Shadow). TNT's adaptation of the Image/Top Cow comic Witchblade falls into the later category. However, in deciding to strip down Witchblade and make it more realistic and non-comic like, TNT has come up with a movie that fails to interest those new to the series and appease those expecting the same type of dark story telling of creator's Marc Silvestri and David Wohl. Although Yancy Butler fills "the glove" well, she doesn't really bring anything new to the character. The story is tired, and disappointingly mundane. The gangster storyline seems a ripoff of so many other Cop vs. Mafia themed stories. The action sequences are particularly boring. Aren't we all tired of the rip-off Matrix effects by now. Witchblade is a surprisingly lackluster pilot and does not really inspire non-fans of the comic, like myself, from wanting to pick up any current issues or tune into any future episodes of the cable series.