In the belated standalone film of Natasha Romanoff (Johansson), the Russian elite assassin defects and becomes a prominent member of the Avengers, BLACK WIDOW’s main action is to emancipate young female trained assassins, like Natasha herself, who are involuntarily subjected under mind control by the evil Russian General Dreykov (Winstone), the overseer of “the Red Room” (an assassin training program, not that Lynchian mazelike oddity), from their servitude. It is a loose and slap-happy design, for one thing, we are given no clue of the provenance of the magic antidote which serves as a game-changer in the plot, which genius invents it? Scientific work has no place in a superhero flick, as it seems.
However as audience, do we also need some antidote to the mind control of the superhero blockbusters that have been incessantly churned out for more than a decade? The answer is affirmative, but BLACK WIDOW could be an outlier, not least because nostalgia and preconception of a permanent departure has settled in for a much needed closure, we want to say adieu to Natasha proper, because in AVENGERS: ENDGAME (2019), where we are all gutted for the disconsolate loss of Tony Stark, her own heroic demise takes the short stick.
Jumping on the wagon of female empowerment and representation, BLACK WIDOW is helmed by Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland (her fourth feature) and confects a family-centered original story for Natasha. It is the reunion with her younger sister Yelena (Pugh), another trained assassin like her, their father Alexei (Harbour) aka. Red Guardian, a superhuman soldier, and mother Melina (Weisz), the brainy lead scientist in the Red Room - the four, not blood related, once pretended to be a normal family in Ohio to extract intel from S.H.I.E.L.D. in the ‘90s - that satisfactorily bestows Natasha a sense of belonging, something to aver that she is not just a lonely killing machine, warmth and raillery are conjured up to give the action-packed procedural some stimulating bite (like Natasha the inveterate poser, or Yelena’s quaint fondness of overalls with multi-pockets).
Also the cast is game to go through the rote storyline, Johansson is exceptionally sympathetic in Natasha’s curtain call, her fortitude is touching; Weisz has flair and mystique to render her Melina an appealing patina, but it gnaws me that why she shouldn’t be partially responsible for the mind-control skulduggery, she is the prime mover and seems to do it of her own bat (she keeps experimenting on pigs!). Harbour and Pugh contributes most of the jokes, the latter also spunkily assumes the mantle for her sister, Pugh’s “next big thing” status is ineluctable.
As per Marvel’s standard (and deep pockets), BLACK WIDOW’s extravagant FX is consistently engaging if singularity never emerges (every time when the dust settles, it leaves an ecocide no one cares), crisply coordinated action sequences are slick in motion but uneventful in impact, Natasha is not superhuman, still she can defy gravity, survive grievous car crushes and take haymakers without batting her eyelids, blood at the corner of her mouth is the maximal damage violence can incur to meet our eyes. In the main, BLACK WIDOW is a predictable joyride of thrills and chills, but most crucially, it contests the male dominance of adrenaline driven entertainment, with a preponderance of women in action, it sets an eloquence example no sane person can confute.
referential entries: Patty Jenkins’ WONDER WOMAN 1984 (2020, 6.5/10); Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s CAPTAIN MARVEL (2019, 7.2/10).
Title: Black Widow
Year: 2021
Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Country: USA
Language: English, Russian
Director: Cate Shortland
Screenwriter: Eric Pearson
based on the story by Jai Schaeffer and Ned Benson
Music: Lorne Balfe
Cinematography: Gabriel Beristain
Editing: Leigh Folsom Boyd, Matthew Schmidt
Cast:
Scarlett Johansson
Florence Pugh
Rachel Weisz
David Harbour
Ray Winstone
O-T Fagbenle
Olga Kurylenko
William Hurt
Ever Andrerson
Violet McGraw
Michelle Lee
Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Rating: 7.1/10
