Brilliant spectacle. Its story thrust was left to viewer's imagination

Rating: 6/10 (29 July 2018)

An American action film; A story about a new ruler of a hidden African nation who faces a challenge for his throne. Assisted by his tribe's forces and a CIA agent, the new King is soon locked in a life-or-death struggle for the future of the world. This is a film which has multiple themes including isolationism vs threat of openness, and the notion of what wealthy nations owe to the poor and oppressed.
Few Marvel films work better tonally than this. The battle action sequences, which overcrowed the story in the other films in the Marvel series, have more purpose here. By no means does "Black Panther" transcend the action genre but it certainly embraces it in a skilful way. It has a plentiful array of costumes, inspiring set design, and different cultural elements which are well-observed and impressively rendered using CGI which provide a beautiful backdrop of a near idyll.
However, the characters are not easily distinguishable from the beauty and sweeping majesty of the stage backcloth and it is impeded by the studio's anodyne dialogue which feels like design-by-committee. T'Challa, the King, is po-faced and no more interesting for what he says than Captain America and Thor who also lack dimension. Martin Freeman's character was smooth-talking but drab and with a turn of phrase of a freshman, not an airman. In contrast, Michael B. Jordan's villain ignited the film giving it a spring in its step, while Andy Serkis gave us a character of some verve albeit brief.
All in all, it looks fabulous, but its thematic assertions were feint.