I have no idea why I ended my lazy Saturday night by watching a relatively obscure and insignificant Russian superhero-movie because a) I don't particularly like this genre and b) I really don't like complete rip-offs of movies that I don't particularly like to begin with
And "Black Lightning" is, in fact, a blatant rip-off of "Spiderman" in the version of Sam Raimi. The resemblances are quite humorous, at least if they are all intentional and tongue-in-cheek (which I sincerely doubt). The Russian Peter Parker is named Dima, but he nevertheless remains a nerdy and pathetic college boy with a hopeless crush on his classmate Mary Jane (Nastya in Russian) and a terribly annoying and philosophizing goody-two-shoes mentor (his father instead of Uncle Ben). The evil Green Goblin on duty is – like Norman Osborn was – a wealthy industrialist and inspirational university tutor who wants to drill for diamonds underneath the city of Moscow. For this he needs the nano-catalyst, but the old brainiacs who invented this powerful fuel source built it into a traditionally old Volga vehicle. And guess who receives the Volga for his birthday? Peter, err I mean Dima, of course, and you know what they say in superhero land: with great power comes great responsibilities and blah blah blah
With his flying Volga, Dima metamorphoses into Black Lightning and rescues poor citizens in perilous situations while college buddy runs off with the girl. The Volga is a cool piece of scenery, but apart from that there's absolutely nothing to recommend here, except if you what to see how shameless imitations can get. Back in the 1980's, Italian directors were also making shameless and blatant imitations of Hollywood blockbusters, but at least their rip-offs were nastier, trashier, sleazier and crazier. This Russian imitation is only more boring!
Review of Black Lightning
