BLACK WIDOW. Directed by Bob Rafelson; written by Ronald Bass; produced by Harold Schneider for Twentieth Century Fox. Starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell. Rated R (nudity, language).
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Black Widow is moody and uneven, but occasionally interesting. The story is part thriller, part detective story and part psychological study. Some of the parts work better than others. But the sum of the parts is still disappointing.
The pace is too deliberate for a good thriller. And the characters are too sparsely drawn to make a satisfying drama.
The basic story of Black Widow is its best asset. It gives us a cool, calculating killer (Russell) who marries wealthy men and bumps them off before the ink's dry on their wills ... leaving everything to her, of course.
She's smart enough not to get caught at it—at least for a while. Until Justice Department flunkie Alex (Winger) gets suspicious about what appears to be a pattern of deaths and picks up her trail.
So far, the plot is fairly ordinary detective fare, except that both detective and criminal are women. That is an intersting new wrinkle, but it doesn't really affect the standard story too much.
Then Alex meets her quarry, and the story gets a little weird. Feigning friendship in hopes of getting some evidence, or at least a little understanding, Alex eventually gets more involved than she expects. The women really do seem to be friends, for one thing. And they're both interested in the same man, for another.
Some of the foregoing plot summary is necessarily speculative, I must admit, because the movie is frustratingly skimpy in the area of character motivation. Once the women are in a situation, their behavior is meticulously studied. But why they got there is anybody's guess.
The biggest omission concerns Russell's chameleon character. We're never given an inkling as to the reason for her murderous behavior. Maybe she just wants to be rich? Philosophically, this vagueness may make sense (Alex says at one point: "Nobody knows why anybody does anything"). But it's frustrating to a movie audience.
Alex fares little better. The pretext for her becoming obsessed with the murderess is flimsy, at best. Boredom with her job is suggested, but we don't see enough of her in the early going to be sure. And how does she really feel about the killer?
It's impossible not to like Winger at least a little. But I like her less here than in any of her other movies. The animation which usually makes her characters sparkle is largely absent here. Russell is fascinating to watch (even apart from being quite attractive). But her character is ultimately too frustrating to figure out, and too hollow to be truly compelling.
The best actors in the supporting cast have the smallest roles. This leaves the key part of Paul, whom both women apparently love, to Sami Frey. He isn't charismatic enough to make this plot angle believeable.
Black Widow has all the looks of a smart, snazzy thriller. But the style fritters away what substance there is until all that's left is that glittery facade.
February 18, 1987