Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
Finally, an answer to the question that’s been on everyone’s lips, just what did Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha “Black Widow” Romanoff get up to in-between Captain America: Civil War and Whatever the Next One Was, Probably an Avengers Film. A question that I presume someone must have had? Maybe? No? Me neither.
Anyway, here we are. Or more precisely in 2016 we are, after a flashback to 1995 where a young Natasha is part of a deep cover unit with David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov, Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff and, once she’s grown up, Florence Pugh’s Yelena Belova, where they are shown having the appearance, and perhaps more, of a family until they are activated and have to leave in a hurry, Agents of SHIELD in pursuit, back to Russia. The unit is disbanded and the kiddywinks head off to Ray Winstone’s General Dreykov’s shady Red Room facility.
Back to more modern times, and Romanoff is busy running from SHIELD, escaping to Norway where she finds she’d been mailed some vials of McGuffinium, and the Taskmaster, who initially seems like a kung fu robot, stomps after her. Escaping again, she globe-trots off to Budapest, reuniting there with her “sister” Belova and, after a bit of defecting-based tension, the two reunite in a bid to take down the Red Room once and for all, aided by the McGuffinium which, it turns out, is an antidote to the mind control techniques General Dreykov’s using to control his army of Black Widow Operatives, who are now all sic’d on Belova and Romanoff, so they’re going to need a little help from their family to complete their mission.
Before I get too far in to the weeds with Black Widow I should say that it passed the time well enough, and it’s another dependably Marvelish instalment in their Universe. So if you just want the short form of this, if you have any tolerance left for Marvel films, fill your boots. However, after not all that much thought about it, I’m mainly left with a feeling of wasted opportunities and wasted potential from the film.
There’s a good number of ideas and elements I like here, but the one thing that stops this being all it could be is that damnable Marvel label, and is now surely the disproval of the idea that it is a masterstroke that all these films have the same tone no matter what the subject matter is. Now, taking any ideas from DC is obviously dangerous, but it would not hurt to make one film in this interminable parade of them be a little dark and gritty, with a bit of a sharp edge, would it? And wouldn’t it be this film that screams out for it, a film where nigh on everyone is a mass murdering assassin, or the head of brainwashing program that makes mass murdering assassins? Shouldn’t one of these films maybe explore that whole mass murder thing, just a little? It’s surely a better venue for a discussion on the morality and necessity of killing than Man of Steel, right?
And there’s moments where it’s edging towards that, before hastily backing away and cutting to David Harbour gurning with a comedy Russian accent, which to be clear is wonderful, but not the tone this film needs to join up its actions and its emotions. A lot of this, particularly early on, plays like Marvel’s Bourne Identity, and is much more interesting for it, but this just cannot help getting the same Marvel standard paint job, so in the same film where someone’s trying to come to terms with the bombing of innocent children, the same character is also descending from a crashing space station by jumping down bits of falling debris like some cut-rate Sonic The Hedgehog cutscene. This is definitely an instance where they should not have gone big, but instead quite literally gone home.
For all the rest that Black Widow does right or wrong, my abiding memory of this film will be ultimate confirmation that the Marvel Universe will not tolerate deviation from the norm, even when the story badly needs it, and expecting any growth or change in it would be as futile as expecting any better from The Fast and the Furious. I give up. No mas. Well, maybe the next Thor film. If Korg is in it.
Marvel film / 10.