Black Widow: Dissapoitingly drab and lifeless

(spoilers)

Rob Ryan

After a 5 year delay (partly thanks to year push back in release thanks to the pandemic) We finally have a Black Widow movie in the MCU catalogue. A little too late considering the characters untimely death in the last Avengers movie but better late than never I guess. While there has currently been much debate on the MCU's validity in their place in cinema and their precedent with regards to their saturation in the marketplace (which is a discussion for another day) I can't deny that I've been entertained by a lot of them. I've never read the comics but each movie has its own individual character and its own unique setting which gives it more fluidity for some aspects of the franchise to work for someone in some way and the way each plot point and character was set up and eventually paid off is admirable. While I wouldn't call these movies amazing with some minor exceptions, and there are some notable stinkers, and I wouldn't recommend any newcomer to start in the later entries as it would just be absolute gibberish to them, every time I feel like I'm done with each movie, I'm suddenly given more reason to be invested nearly every time.

I don't think there's been a character who has been through so much as Natasha Romanov, from a trained assassin who had her bodily autonomy ripped out of her since her childhood to battling a giant super alien at the edge of the universe. If someone, were to pitch this character without mentioning the name, their minds of where they would end up at the point of death would be wildly different. It's no wonder fans have been speculating on when Marvel will finally give her own stand-alone film as there is undoubtedly loads of potential and material to work with and to give a side of the character we've never seen before. This makes it all the more upsetting to say that Black Widow while entertaining in some of its parts is mostly another dull and forgettable entry in the MCU

The story takes place after the events of Civil War when Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johannson) is on the run from the government and ends up in a safe house in Norway, Meanwhile her long lost sister Yelena (Florence Pugh) is still working for the secret organisation that recruited them since children, The Red Room. run by the diabolical General Dreykov (Ray Winstone). When killing a former Black Widow that went rogue, she comes in contact with red dust that removes The Red Room's control over her, she sends the same antidote to Natasha in Norway to call for her help. This only places her as a target for a ruthless mercenary named Taskmaster who is after the antidote to prevent any more Black Widows from being free from Dreykov's control. After barely escaping the two sisters are reunited and now go on a mission to bring down The Red Room once and for all. But not before finding their estranged surrogate parents who abandoned them, Alexi Shostakov AKA Red Guardian (David Harbour) and former Black Widow Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz)

The first 10-15 minutes of the film are actually quite promising as we finally are given a brief look into Natasha's and Yelena's seemingly innocent childhood which takes a dark turn after being whisked away from their suburban neighbourhood in Ohio to barely evading capture by police to landing in Cuba where they are then drugged and taken as recruits of the Red Room where their innocence is taken away from them. It's an element of the film that's both brutal and tragic and shows just how far Natasha has come, someone who has chosen to not let her trauma define her and instead use her skills learned for good. The opening credits set to a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit surprisingly packs a punch as we are given small glimpses of some of the trauma faced by the two sisters.

After that opening however the film descends into a dull and dreary actioner that has no sense of identity whatsoever. A lot of the Marvel movies take a cheesy and lighthearted approach to their films but Black Widow is more interested in being more self-serious and gritty, which isn't a bad idea on its own and other Marvel movies have done it well. Captain America Winter Soldier for example places its characters mostly away from the gigantic special effects and all the action was placed in real-world settings. But where that film also had huge stakes and a story that took some surprising twists and turns, Black Widow feels like it's going through the motions and thinks that grey moody lighting, monotone facial expressions and performances constitutes the alternative to light-hearted. While people criticize the Marvel films for having no distinct visual style and each movie feels directed by the same person, The "gritty" approach that Black Widow takes, makes it indistinguishable from spy movies and action movies as a whole.

When the action scenes end which aren't that exciting, to begin with, I found myself increasingly uninvested and bored. The unexciting action sequences, while they have their moment's, are more than likely hindered by the knowledge of Natasha's passing which deflates any tension for myself and most people who have been keeping up with this franchise as we know that she's going to come out of each scene completely fine. It could also be down to the fact that while yes, clearly a lot of time and effort went into the stunts, the visual effects and so on, at this point I and other people have become too desensitised by all of marvel's visual tricks to be surprised or excited by them anymore, after 10 years of wowing us with their impressive visuals and action, it's all become rather pedestrian and bland. They look expensive sure but staging and designing all of these scenes in the age of $200 million movies saturating the marketplace is hardly worthy of praise as my suspension of disbelief has evaporated. As a kid first watching this on a big screen, this would have been exhilarating but now as I've gotten older, each set piece feels so samey that I've now grown out of that wonder and awe I once felt when first viewing these MCU movies.

Other problems with the film: The way in which the film tries to reconcile the two lead characters with their estranged surrogate parents is incredibly unearned. This is most notable in the character of Red Guardian who I'm confident in saying is the most irredeemable character in the MCU since Thanos. To give further context, this is a character who abandoned his daughters to a life of suffering and bloodshed, where their sexual organs were taken away from them and escape from the organisation is not an option. This is a man that has been completely complicit in an organisation that has stolen young girls from their real parents and prevented them from having a normal life. While Melina has the excuse of being under Dreykov's control meaning even if she wanted to set her adopted children free she wouldn't be able to, Alexi on the other hand has none, there is no grey area for what he did and yet the film forgets it and expects us to forgive him for what he did and let bygones be bygones.

This wouldn't be bad if there was a proper attempt for the character to properly come to terms with what he did, what he could have done to redeem himself or if the movie gave us any sense that he was sorry, but no. Instead, Red Guardian becomes the but of every running joke in the film's runtime. This comes in the form of many fat jokes, one notable example is when he finally finds his old suit and barely manages to put it on. Or his rambunctious personality set to a thick Russian accent where he reminisces about "The old days" This guy knowingly did the most unforgivable thing that would make any child rightfully avoid you as much as possible, but who cares, look how fat and out of shape he is LAUGH VIEWERS LAUGH!!!!!

I did enjoy Florence Pugh, as much as I had a hard time fully understanding her Russian accent it looked like she was having fun and Ylena is a likeable enough character that I would want to see more in. Johannson has been in the role long enough where she's more than comfortable in the role. Their chemistry gives the film a bittersweetness that is severely lacking in the rest of the film. Had it been just been about them, and reconnecting with their past while taking down the people who stole their childhood, it could potentially make for a more interesting film. It's only when the shoehorned reunion between the family is when the film completely nosedives

Also as mentioned twice now, if most of your characters are going to be Russian and you're only going to cast British/American actors, maybe make sure the dialect isn't so unintelligible where you can't understand what they are saying a lot of the time, just a pointer for next time!

In the end, Black Widow was a movie that should have been released year's ago and if that were the case it might have had a better chance. But as it is, it's not the worst movie in the MCU but its one that I'm not going to remember for very long and that is a real shame because a character as complex and interesting as Natasha deserved so much better than this. It's not without its high spots but the action is forgettable and at times illogical, direction and cinematography is unremarkable and its new characters (with the exception of Yelena) are not very likeable or redeemable, even Dreykov is a very uninteresting villain despite Ray Winstone chewing the scenery at every turn. If it simply focused on the two sisters or gave a proper redemption to Red Guardian as opposed to constant fat jokes, I most likely would have been won over by the film. Unfortunately, this was not the case and I left the film feeling let down and underwhelmed. The film's after-credits scene isn't much better, as what starts as something sad and moving quickly devolves in Marvel's habit of inappropriately deploying comedy in serious scenes not before setting up a pointless revenge arc that had my eyes rolling to the back of my head. This does not strike confidence for what's to come.

Hear's hoping Spider-Man: No Way Home can bring back that confidence.

Rating: 4/10

Black Widow is out in cinemas and Disney+ Now.