QUICKIE -- Catwoman: Hunted (2022)

Catwoman: Hunted is an American animated superhero film based on the DC Comics character Catwoman by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and produced by Warner Bros. Animation for DC Entertainment. It was released on February 8, 2022, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It is the 44th installment in the DC Universe Animated Original Movies (DCUAOM) line. The film is directed by Shinsuke Terasawa from a script by Greg Weisman. It stars Elizabeth Gillies as Selina Kyle / Catwoman alongside Stephanie Beatriz, Jonathan Banks, Steve Blum, Lauren Cohan, Zehra Fazal, Jonathan Frakes, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Kelly Hu, Andrew Kishino, Eric Lopez, Jacqueline Obradors, and Ron Yuan. OLM, a Japanese studio behind the Pokémon anime series, provided their animation services for the film with their Team Inoue. The film follows Catwoman as she attempts to steal a priceless jewel. The heist puts her squarely in the crosshairs of both a powerful consortium of criminals and villains and the ever-resourceful Interpol as well as Batwoman. It was stated by Weisman to be "adjacent" to his animated series Young Justice, meaning the events of the film occur in some capacity in the cartoon.

Cast

Elizabeth Gillies as Catwoman / Selina Kyle

Stephanie Beatriz as Batwoman / Kate Kane

Jonathan Banks as Black Mask / Roman Sionis

Steve Blum as Solomon Grundy, Abaddon, Pilot

Lauren Cohan as Julia Pennyworth

Keith David as Tobias Whale, Morax

Zehra Fazal as Talia al Ghul, Nosferata, Interpol Commando 1

Jonathan Frakes as King Faraday, Boss Moxie

Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Cheetah / Barbara Minerva

Kelly Hu as Cheshire

Andrew Kishino as Mr. Yakuza, Leviathan Guard 2, Domino 6

Eric Lopez as Domino 1, Leviathan Guard 3, Valet 1

Jacqueline Obradors as La Dama

Ron Yuan as Doctor Tzin-Tzin, Interpol Commando 2

I loved how they didn't even TRY to hide the intentional throwback to Catwoman's original costume from the comics, along with the other references and cameos at the party in the opening scene.

Plot

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

Catwoman infiltrates a gangster costume party hosted by Barbara Minerva in Spain, which is also attended by Gotham City mobster Black Mask who is seeking to join Leviathan, the crime cartel which Minerva leads. As his entrance fee, Black Mask delivers the Cat's Eye Emerald. Catwoman promptly steals the gem and shakes off most of the pursuing gangsters in a furious car chase. Just then, Batwoman blocks her way, causing Catwoman to crash her car and Minerva's aide Tobias Whale recovers the emerald. In revenge for this theft, Minerva has Catwoman marked for liquidation.

Catwoman regains consciousness aboard a jet plane bound for Shanghai in the custody of Batwoman and Interpol agents Julia Pennyworth and King Faraday. Batwoman and the agents explain that the emerald was rigged as a tracking device to trace Minerva in order to take down Leviathan's leadership cadre in one strike. In exchange for Catwoman's cooperation in this case, they offer her complete amnesty for her past crimes. Catwoman agrees, but in between she makes telephonic contact with her friend Holly asking about the status of a group of girls in her care. After the exact location is found, Catwoman and Batwoman infiltrate the meeting place, but are forced to battle hired assassins Cheshire and Nosferata^[a] which results in the Leviathan bosses Black Mask, Doctor Tzin-Tzin, Mister Yakuza, La Dama, and Moxie Mannheim—joining the fight. The cartel bosses and Whale are defeated and arrested, but Minerva manages to get away. Catwoman receives her pardon and walks away, seemingly shrugging off the threat Minerva still poses to her life.

Some time later, Catwoman is still active, but constantly pursued by ninjas from the League of Assassins sent by Minerva's associate Talia al Ghul, Leviathan's true leader. After Batwoman helps her defeat the latest assassin detachment in Paris, Minverva unleashes Solomon Grundy on them. Batwoman is knocked out, but Catwoman defeats Grundy by stuffing his mouth with lit dynamite sticks from a construction site. Forced to take matters into her own hands, Minerva appears before Catwoman, changes into her werecheetah form, and chases after her quarry. Catwoman retreats onto the boom of a construction crane where she taunts Cheetah by revealing that she was responsible for recently breaking up one of Leviathan's human trafficking operations in Sochi, freeing a group of girls slated for underage prostitution and taking them under her care. When Cheetah attacks, Catwoman outdodges her and strangles her into submission. A subsequent lightning strike throws Cheetah off the crane and into the steel bars of a reinforced concrete column, impaling her, although her superhuman physiology enables her to survive.

As Interpol takes Cheetah and Grundy into custody, Catwoman takes her leave after warning Faraday that Leviathan is far from being finished and revealing that she had deliberately targeted the cartel with the theft of the Cat's Eye Emerald, in vengeance for the trafficked girls' plight. After secretly nabbing the jewel from the jet's safe as well, she next travels to London to "pick up a few things at the Tower".

The Verdict:

This film came out on February 8, 2022 and completely slipped my mind if I'm quite honest. Normally, DC's Animated Movies would leak online months prior to their shelf dates of the digital and physical releases (mostly due to international viewers getting access first) and I would have one of these reviews done before then. This time around I just flat out waited until this movie was added as part of HBO Max's streaming service.

There's a lot to like about this film - from it's anime-style visuals to the excellent voice acting cast, led by none other than Dynasty's own Elizabeth Gillies as Selina Kyle/Catwoman. She's a PURRFECT fit for this character and I hope this won't be the last time that we get the honor of her portraying this character. Hell, I would be game for her to play Selina in a live-action setting someday, but that's just me. She brings the sultry and sexy appeal to this character that we have all come to know and love from Catwoman. Stephanie Beatriz (Mirabel Madrigal in Disney's Encanto) is almost unrecognizable as Batwoman/Kate Kane here. That's not even a knock on her vocal talents either. I applaud her for her range and variety here to not have a typecast voice that people instantly recognize when they hear it no matter what you do, such as their co-star, Steve Blum. Zehra Fazal reprises the role of voicing Talia Al-Ghul from Batman: Death in the Family while picking up newcomer Nosferata as well. Fazal's vocal range doesn't surprise me as much as Beatriz when I already know that she voices at least a dozen DC characters and counting in Young Justice currently, so she's just padding her resume at this point. The legendary Keith David (Al Simmons/Spawn in HBO's Spawn (animated series) and Goliath in Disney's Gargoyles) voices Tobias Whale and Morax. Other noteworthy voice actors include but not limited to: Lauren Cohan (Maggie Green from The Walking Dead, Martha Wayne in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice) voices Julia Pennyworth. Jonathan Banks (Breaking Bad) voices Black Mask/Roman Sionis. Jonathan Frakes (David Xanatos in Disney's Gargoyles and William Riker in Star Trek: The Next Generation) voices King Faraday and Boss Moxie. Jacqueline Obradoras voices La Dama. And finally, Kirby Howell-Baptiste voices Cheetah/Barbara Minerva. We even get an appearance by Kelly Hu's Cheshire (Young Justice). If you haven't noticed but these are a lot voice actors who have worked with or currently are working with writer Greg Weisman in the past.

The film is only a hour and eighteen minutes long in length. You would think that's short, but it's long enough for this type of story. To make a long story short, Selina Kyle/Catwoman sets out steal the Cat's Eye Emerald from the Leviathan organization, only for her heist to go awry and she becomes their #1 target with all of their assassins and hitmen looking to bring in her head. This comes into the favor of Batwoman, who is working with Interpol's King Faraday and Julia Pennyworth to bring in the new head of the Leviathan organization, Barbara Minerva. I felt like a colossal dumbass by the film's climax came around too as it totally slipped my mind that Minerva is the one of the several women in DC Comics' lore that becomes the Cheetah. Minerva puts a bounty out for Selina's head as she wants to make an example out of her to anyone who thinks they could cross Leviathan and get away with it. She brings in just about every bit of muscle under their employ, including Black Mask and Tobias Whale's henchmen, the League of Assassins' (who is headed by Talia al Ghul in this continuity) Nosferata, Cheshire, and countless ninjas under their banner, along with other high ranking members of Leviathan, La Dama, Boss Moxie (Bruno Mannheim's father and head of Intergang in this continuity) , Mr. Yakuza, and Doctor Tzin-Tzin (who I jokingly thought was a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Jonny Quest villain of a similar name at first).

I'm not even going to pretend like I know who all of those villains in Leviathan were, when I don't outside of Black Mask, Tobias Whale, and Cheshire. I did pop for Cheshire getting to fight with Selina as I was wondering if they ever crossed paths in Weisman's Young Justice continuity and I actually got my answer here. I should note that I enjoyed the car chase at the beginning too. La Dama's a villain that I'm surprised who hasn't gotten more screen time more animated adaptations as she seems to have a pretty gnarly power set since she's able to conjure up and command demons to do her bidding. I didn't know what to make of Doctor Tzin-Tzin from the brief exposure to him in the action here. I did get a good chuckle out of Boss Moxie and his cronies going full giant mecha/Ironman with their Intergang technology that they brought to the fight that proved to be fruitless anyway.

All of these failed assassination attempts, along with even throwing the undead monster Solomon Grundy at Selina and Batwoman to a losing effort, forces Minerva to take matters into her own hands as she reveals her "true" self as Wonder Woman nemesis, the Cheetah. Selina finds herself definitely in over her head against the superior powers of the Cheetah as a full blown predator against a "pretender" like herself. In the end, Selina manages to outwit her to lead to Minerva's untimely demise while Interpol is able to arrest the rest of the members of Leviathan that her and Batwoman have taken down. As per their arrangement, Selina is freed from her international criminal charges but reveals that she intentionally set out to earn the ire of Leviathan after becoming aware of their human trafficking operation with young women in Sochi. Before Interpol could realize what had transpired, Selina had already left with the Cat's Eye emerald in her possession with the film ending with her looking to sell it in Paris in exchange for a lot of wealth to take care of the women that she saved.

It seems like they left the door open for more adventures with Selina here, but I was happy with this as a one and done affair. It was a nice breath of fresh air to see that DC Animated Movies finally focused on a female lead character that's not either Wonder Woman or Harley Quinn to say that they have such an extensive amount of strong female characters under the DC Comics banner.