"Catwoman"

The frustrating thing about "Catwoman" is that Berry does her damnedest to make the character work. Some of her physical moves are astonishing: Her offhanded grace is exceedingly catlike. In one scene, as Patience, she struts delicately and effortlessly along the back of a couch as she talks on the phone to a friend -- her feet barely seem to touch the surface. As Catwoman, dressed in a leather cross-your-heart bra and trouser combo, she cracks a bullwhip with vicious ease, and her saunter must have been modeled on the way some cats really walk. Although Berry's outfit was obviously designed to highlight her distinctly feminine qualities, her strut reminds me of that of a certain self-assured tomcat I know: It's a sexually confident sashay, one that's predatory and fascinatingly masculine. In a different movie, Berry might have had a chance to explore some deeper, darker crannies of sexual politics.

But in this one, she's all but lost. "Catwoman" was shot by Thierry Arbogast, the extraordinary cinematographer behind Brian De Palma's "Femme Fatale," among other pictures. (He frequently collaborates with Luc Besson, a director who has often been fascinated with putting aggressive yet seductive womanly power on the screen.) But for inexplicable reasons, the camera doesn't drink Berry's Catwoman in the way it ought to -- I felt I never really had a chance to savor her slinky movements, or even to get a really good look at her costume. The fight sequences are choppy and frenetic -- it's never clear who's coming at whom, or from where, and Pitof doesn't seem to really care. And the picture is marred further by too many computer-generated shots of Catwoman leaping across ledges and rooftops. Are we supposed to be more interested in the handiwork of some computer whiz than we are in looking at the real Berry?

The story gives Berry a flimsy love interest in the form of a cop, played by Benjamin Bratt, who's both intrigued by and antagonistic toward the elusive Catwoman. But their chemistry flops -- although it's hard to imagine how love, or even just lust, could ever take root in a picture that has as miserably pinched a sense of mystery and romance as this one does.

If "Catwoman" fails at the box office, it may be stupidly taken as proof that an African-American actress can't carry a big-budget movie. In a New York Times piece earlier this week, Sharon Waxman noted that if the movie is successful, it will place Berry in the category of the most highly paid women stars and will "signify yet another achievement for African-American actors."

Waxman understands the realities of the business: "Catwoman" needs to do well to prove Berry's worth as a star. Even so, I think audiences -- not to mention journalists -- should be wary of buying wholesale the idea that any actor's "value" can be judged on the strength of one movie's financial success. I hate to see Berry have to carry that burden, particularly in a picture that's so obviously bad in spite of her, not because of her. Why does Berry need to be the standard bearer just because of her sex and her race? And beyond that, while I'm painfully aware of the realities of the moviemaking business, I hate the fact that any actor (regardless of color or gender) should be judged by the box-office receipts of any particular movie. Denzel Washington is often used as an example of a male actor of color who can "open" a big-budget movie. But while Washington is sometimes a terrific actor, other times he's just a dull, worthy one: He gave a wonderful, jazzy performance in the romantic thriller "Out of Time," which did poorly at the box office. Yet the perfunctory performance he gives in Tony Scott's deplorable "Man on Fire" is the sort of thing Hollywood execs are likely to view as successful. (And as far as Hollywood's providing better roles for African-American actresses goes: Yes, they need better roles and more visibility. But if the answer is to give them boring, ponderously prestigious Meryl Streep-type roles, or roles that require prosthetic noses -- well, in that context, the flashy cat suit doesn't look half bad.)

The point is that while we have to acknowledge how Hollywood views actors (sadly, as meat rather than people -- or so it often seems), that doesn't mean we, as moviegoers, have to stoop to that level. Isn't it braver by far to ignore box-office receipts and Hollywood politics and to judge performances for their own sake? If anything, because Hollywood is so hung up on profiting off its actors, we should be more alive to the subtle gifts they're capable of bringing to us, regardless of how much their movies rake in. That's another way of saying that as bad as "Catwoman" is, we shouldn't make the mistake of considering it Berry's failure, or, worse yet, evidence of the unbankability of actresses of color. It's taking forever for actresses of color to find their footing in Hollywood. Berry, at the very least, is trying to stay on her toes as she leads the way.

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