Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 28, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Loosely based on the comic by Bob Kane, French cinema magician Pitof (“Vidocq”) staged the story of a lowly graphic designer who declares war on a powerful cosmetics company in the 2004 American feature film.
Corporate boss George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his wife Laurel (Sharon Stone), an ageing supermodel, want to revolutionise the beauty market with a new anti-ageing cream. But the new secret weapon shows unpleasant side effects in initial tests, which employee Patience (Halle Berry) discovers by chance. While fleeing her unscrupulous boss, she falls several storeys, but miraculously survives the fatal fall – albeit in a somewhat altered form: from that moment on, she prowls the city as Catwoman, dressed in skin-tight patent leather, and swears terrible revenge on her ex-boss. No one is a match for the newborn superheroine except the attractive cop Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), who falls head over heels in love with the mysterious woman.
Viewers of “ZDF-Montagskino” can expect 100 minutes of spectacular, action-packed fantasy adventure with music-video-style camera moves, rapidly edited fight scenes, plenty of sex appeal and heartache, and a duel between two “superwomen”: Halle Berry shines in the title role, the first African-American actress to receive the Oscar for best actress, who has just had her first child at the age of 41. Her adversary as the embittered corporate boss is Sharon Stone, who became Hollywood’s erotic icon in the nineties with the thriller “Basic Instinct”.
