For
a comic book story to transcend its roots and succeed as a movie or TV
show, it has to create an intriguing and often conflicted hero, present
a strong story and feature an interesting, and preferably original, production
design.
TNT's
"Witchblade," a telemovie (and series pilot) comes close on the hero part,
but misses entirely on the other elements.
Yancy
Butler, who already has survived one sci-fi debacle (Dick Wolf's ill-conceived
"Mann and Machine" series, where she played a cyborg cop) and a short-lived
Steven Bochco police drama ("Brooklyn South"), plays a policewoman yet
again here.
Yancy
Butler is a present-day homicide detective who finds a sinister bracelet
in 'Witchblade.'
Butler
is Sara Pezzini, a homicide detective in present-day New York City (well,
almost present day; the telemovie begins on Nov. 11, 2000). Her friends,
like her father, a policeman, keep getting killed — and her best chance
of exacting revenge comes about by accident, when a shootout inside a museum
brings her in contact with a mysterious and ancient bracelet artifact.
The
bracelet is, in reality, a Witchblade. When worn by the preordained champion,
it becomes a chameleonic powerhouse: a bullet-deflecting bracelet here,
a bayonet-like knife here, a samurai sword there. In other words, it's
Wonder Woman's bracelets, Wolverine's claws and Xena's sword all rolled
into one — and it changes into a suit of armor, too.
In
TV's "Witchblade," written by J.D. Zeik and directed by Ralph Hemecker,
Sara's armor is neither buff nor buffed. It's clunky and anything but form-fitting.
In the original Top Cow comic book, the Witchblade metamorphosed into an
outfit that was part H.R. Giger and part Penthouse: a living, skimpy, (barely)
protective bikini, with boots and arm gauntlets to match.
On
TV, the pinup quotient is downplayed to the point of negation. Butler wears
jeans most of the time, going for basic realism instead of comic fantasy
fulfillment. Which would be fine, if anything else about this "Witchblade"
took the same approach.
Instead,
the special effects try to play with time and space as in "The Matrix,"
the editing is so rapid-fire it tries to make MTV look like "Teletubbies,"
and the soundtrack often mistakes loud music for tension. Add it all up,
and everything in "Witchblade" seems like a cliché convention, up
to and including Kenneth Welsh's superior officer, who gruffly asks for
Sara's badge.
Only
Butler, who takes all of this seriously enough to look anguished at all
times, deserves none of the blame for this meltdown. That look of anguish,
though, could be explained simply by her having read the script, and comprehending
what she and her agent had gotten her into.
"I
still don't know exactly what the Witchblade is or how to use it," her
character says at the end. The director and writer of this TNT telemovie
could say the same thing.
