Black Widow

 

Before she was an Avenger, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) was a Black Widow, an assassin trained and controlled by the Red Room overseen by Soviet Gen. Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Before that, however, she and fellow Black Widow child recruit Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) lived in Ohio posing as the children of Soviet agents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), a super-soldier and a senior Black Widow, respectively. In 2016, while on the run from American government official Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), Natasha is contacted by Yelena, who has recently broken free of the Red Room. Mutually distrustful, the former sisters must work together to confront their past.

 

If nothing else, Black Widow is a victim of circumstance. Though envisioned as a stand-alone “sidequel” to give the title character a proper send-off following her death in Avengers: Endgame, multiple delays pushed Black Widow into the unenviable position of being the first MCU film release in more than a year at a time when Marvel’s Disney Plus series were making the big screen seem irrelevant. Ouch. Taking timing out of the equation, however, and Black Widow is a solidly exciting action flick with deft humor, a likable cast, and several glaring flaws.

 

Helmed by Cate Shortland and written by WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer, among others, Black Widow manages a mishmash of tones. It spares us the gratuitousness of a firsthand look at Red Room training while still conveying the gravity of its trauma, which both Johansson and Pugh do quite convincingly. At the same time, Natasha and Yelena’s competitive banter, which switches between English and Russian, is a source of humanization for the hardened assassins as well as humor. Speaking of the latter, Alexei as a boastful Soviet-equivalent Captain America knockoff gone to seed, is set up as the film’s comic relief, but his arc is still tinged with pathos.

 

The only substantial characters lacking in complexity are Dreykov and his top enforcer, the Taskmaster. In the case of the former, Winstone plays him as a distinctively loathsome bastard, so this isn’t exactly a liability. Taskmaster, while a formidable combatant, is largely a waste of the character. The comic book counterpart is a trash-talking mercenary rival to Deadpool with a photographic memory and the ability to copy an opponent’s fighting style. The film version retains the latter trait though presents a different character under the armor as a largely mute minion, devoid of everything else that made Taskmaster interesting.

 

If Black Widow’s tone is in flux, so too is the quality of its plentiful action sequences. When it sticks to hand-to-hand combat and gunplay, it’s well-choreographed. Though Yelena mocks Natasha’s combat poses, the latter is still as competent a fighter as ever. Once the film becomes airborne, however, it kicks suspension of disbelief out the window and resorts to excesses that would make Michael Bay blush.

 

In keeping with Marvel traditions, Black Widow’s post-credits scene hints at what is to come. That moment aside, this is one of the MCU’s least impactful entries though, all things considered, hardly one of its worst.