ChristopherLamb’s review published on Letterboxd:
And so begins what I can only assume will be a life-long crush on Shuri and Letitia Wright. Aside from her just being stunningly beautiful, her incredible performance really was pivotal to the successes of both the fun and emotional aspects to the movie. Her chemistry with Boseman was one of the most natural and believable relationships in the MCU. There's a lot I love about the movie, but her character left the biggest impression on me.
That said, she wasn't the only one to shine. This is easily the strongest ensemble cast of acting in the MCU and has richness in more characters than ANY movie I can think of. Boseman, MBJ, Letitia Wright, Winston Duke, Andy Serkis, Lupita, Kaluuya, Sterling K. Brown, Angela Basset, and Danai Gurira. ALL of them were great. Even in the Avengers and Civil War there are a lot of characters but a lot of them are just kind of there. Every actor was given moments to shine and each killed those moments respectively. You could tell everyone really cared about this movie and had a lot of fun with it.
*******SPOILERS BELOWWWWWW**********
Overall, Ill say that it was one of the most emotionally impactful and satisfying movies and stories in all of this genre of movie, even outside of the MCU. There was weight. Things like Erik killing his girlfriend, Klaw, and slitting the throat of one of the guards. The blood in the fights for the crown. It all help ground the movie in reality and add consequence to what was going on.
Like Killmonger, the best villains are like the best heroes in that they cant be corrupted by anything. Even survival. They are willing to die for a principle. He demonstrates this throughout the movie and it culminates in his speech at the end. "Bury me in the ocean where my ancestors jumped from ships because they knew death was better than bondage." I mean shit. That's powerful. Erik is a villain because of how he wants to make change, but he isn't nefariously evil. He's a tragedy shaped by the world and others actions. I found it heartbreaking. Even though he disappears from a good portion of the movie, hes still one of my favorite villains of all time.
As for the weaknesses, I thought it started out a little too slow. It took a while for me to get into it and I think only when Erik showed up did I start to engage. A lot of the wider shots felt fake and noticeable green screen took me out of the movie at times. I agree that especially for what we have been getting in other movies the action was extremely underwhelming. The Okoye fight in the casino was great. The car chase scene was great. The fight between the Dora Milaje (yes I had to look that up) and Killmonger was really good. The battle between Kaluya's tribe and Black Panther/the Dora Milaje was good. So thats a lot i guess.
The rest, however was either incomprehensible or too CG. The last fight scene on the train I didnt like really at all. The fighting looked like a video game and it wasn't a great decision to have two characters in black suits in an extremely dark setting. I will say what saves all of those scenes that I thought visually lacked is that there was still emotion behind it and I still cared. I noticed my whole body was tense during the two battles for the crown of Wakanda so I definitely cared. They just visually it could've been better.
Cant wait to see this again.
Wakanda Forever!
