Catwoman

(Herald rating * *)

In a corner of our office sits a quiet, industrious soul who spends her days at her Mac, creating newspaper pages against deadlines. We call her the graphic designer.

Patience Phillips (Halle Berry) is a similar character at the cosmetics company of George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his onetime supermodel wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone). Working late, Patience hears the company chemist say that a new skin cream is addictive and if a customer stops using it their face will begin to melt. This is not the sort of product that makes you think you're worth it.

The Hedares bump the chemist off. Patience runs away but is trapped and flushed out to sea. When her body washes ashore, she's brought back to life by a chorus of cats.

Patience seeks help from retired professor Ophelia Powers (say it out loud. No, don't. She's played by Frances Conroy, Six Feet Under) who tells Patience she is now a "cat woman".

Which means about two hours of Halle Berry wearing skintight black leather, eating her fish out of the tin and hissing at dogs.

In a plot device that's not worth the space to explain it, the half of her that is Patience becomes involved with Detective Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), who is hunting the mysterious Catwoman for a rash of recent crimes.

Berry continues the downward slide in career choices of the past few years. Her scenes with Bratt are less than charged, the dialogue is excruciating and the action poorly choreographed. In short, there's little here to compare with the quality comic-book re-inventions of recent times — the Spiderman franchise, in particular. But I will be very careful not to upset our graphic designer in the New Year.

DVD, video rental December 30