Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher (2014)

Powerful

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This movie is almost unwatchable. Many have pointed out plot holes and poor writing in general but add to that the cringe inducing voice acting, the feeble attempt at an anime tone and the absolutely horrible editing. There are constant scenes of a character saying something in the middle of a conversation and unexplained delays before the other person says anything back. Maybe it would make sense if the director included a meaningful look or gesture or frankly anything but there's nothing. Half the time, while you're waiting for anyone to respond to a line the scene is just everyone standing or sitting and there's no expression on their face at all. I understand "meaningful" pauses but these are just pauses that make no sense.So the writing is a mess, the voice acting is painful and the editing barely exist. Avoid this movie as if it will give your brain cancer - because it will.

Did not like it.It was more talk than action. I kind of hate it when animation is all talk, what's the point? The animation does not even look cheap it looks like some effort went into it. Enough effort for it not to be just the characters talking for 90mins. Maybe it would be worth the talk if it was not a story I heard many times. Though the addiction of the Punisher is some-what refreshing, listening to the Black widow and Nick fury defend their occupations as spies is only interesting when Sam L Jackson and Scarlett Johansson do it. The voice acting was not worthy of all that talk. It was like they were just reading their lines and not really well. I've seen better action sequences and the character design was weak. When The Avengers finally made it on screen, I was not excited to see them at all.I do like seeing the villain Graviton done for animation but his appearance was to minimal too salvage the film. Found it uninteresting.

Not content on dominating the big screen with a connected Marvel cinematic universe, Marvel now aims to create a connected anime universe. Avengers Confidential is a loose sequel to to Iron Man: Rise of Technovore. This time, Iron Man takes a back seat to previous supporting characters of Punisher and Black Widow. Following their debacle in Karachi, Frank Castle aka The Punisher, has returned to taking out organised crime lords. But when one of his hits crosses path with S.H.I.E.L.D, Frank is taken into custody. He has stumbled onto a vast international conspiracy involving an old Russian supersoldier programme and mind control. Unwillingly teamed up with s.H.I.E.L.D agent Black Widow, Frank has to deal with superpowered foes way out of his league while Widow must confront a shadowy figure from her past.It is an intriguing story. Well written and feeling like it came straight out of the comic books. No surprise there that it was written by comic book writer Majorie Liu. This is a cool way to tie The Punisher into the greater world of Marvel anime characters, themselves already sharing a lot in common with the live action movie universe. In live action, The Punisher's gritty mafia/street crime stories just do not mix with the Avengers' high flying superheroics. If they cannot do it in live action, anime would have to suffice.Credit goes to this movie for coming up with an interesting reason why the superpowered Avengers remain out of the picture. Since you have a villain who perfected mind control, the last thing you can risk is your most powerful heroes turning against you. So they get plain ol human Frank Castle, The Punisher, and plain ol human Black Widow. Except, the "plain ol human" bit is conveniently forgotten about 10 minutes in where both Punisher and Black Widow are able to go hand to hand with super soldiers, dodge bullets, punch people through walls and take injuries that would kill any normal human.Now, this being Japanese anime, Marvel has allowed Madhouse Studios (creators of classics like Ninja Scroll, Trigun and the rest of Marvel's anime output) to sprinkle their own eastern touch into this tale. The result......a mixed bag. First is the screenplay, written by Mitsutaka Hirota of Ramen fighter Miki and YuGiOh Zexal fame/infamy. It is a stiffled screenplay, clichéd and lacking any of the wit or character interplay that marvel's live action universe excels in.This is not helped by the mediocre voice acting from both Japanese and English actors. Punisher growls and grumbles his way through the movie lacking chemistry with Black Widow; herself portrayed more as a straightforward hero with a tragic past romance than a sultry manipulative secret agent whom no one can guess what she is planning to do next. This same screenplay turns our main antagonist into some love scorned brat with a serious inferiority complex who subjected himself to experiments to become a superpowered stalker after his old flame.Once again, Marvel anime serves as a showcase of what anime always gets wrong. Hyper detailed artwork is ruined by animation shortcuts. First time Director Kenichi Shimizu who watched one too many Michael bay movies peppers this show with shaky cameras, extreme close ups and long lingering shots focused on Black Widow's shiny leather clad chest and bum areas. Nonetheless, the character designs look straight out of Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust with long curvy sharp featured women, square jawed bulky men and a shadow for every nook cranny and crease on a character. They look beautiful.So in keeping with the usual Marvel Anime standards, we have another visually stunning little movie with a decent story but little else in terms of the script, characters and animation. Better than Iron Man: Rise of Technovore of course, and much better than that CGI atrocity Iron Man/Hulk: Heroes United. Yet no where near DC and Warner Premiere's most mediocre efforts.

When I saw the title I thought it was going to be more of a Black Widow/Punisher story than anything and I was right I thought it made Punisher look like the bad*** that he is but it wasn't much of the Avengers the last 10-15 minutes had the Avengers appear which was for me the best part but the long drawn out story with Punisher and Black Widow was kinda dry more talking than anything it was somewhat boring but it was nice to see Punisher get to show how great he is the used Avengers in the name to get the dollars but it should have been called "Black Widow and the Punisher: Fight the Lavethian" ft. The Avengers cause that is pretty much what it was if it wasn't for the free ticket to see The Amazing Spiderman 2 that came with it I would be somewhat upset that I spent money on it