Black Widow: Movie Review

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone

Director: Cate Shortland

Marvel's MeToo moment has arrived in the form of the solo spinoff prequel requiem piece for Scarlett Johansson's Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow.

Delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and with Marvel's desire to ensure their product have a big screen outing, this latest, set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, sees Black Widow on the run, and looking to stay off the grid.

However, when her seemingly abandoned and lost little sister Yelena (Pugh, in a breakthrough blockbuster role, and clearly being set up for more within the franchise) contacts her, Natasha finds herself pulled back into her past, and trying to stop those who ran the Black Widow assassination training programme once and for all...

Black Widow is much a family drama as it is an espionage spy-thriller, albeit one that's writ large through the tropes of a chase movie. Coupled with themes of abuse, largely at the hands of men, and neglect, this is clearly Marvel trying to go for a more mature feel to kickstart the next phase of its inevitable cinematic universe.

And yet, while commendable, the obvious MeToo elements of the film feel heavy-handed and perhaps, weirdly, of a time that's passed. There are also moments when the poignancy of the film is treated with humour as a punchline, robbing the movie of some of the emotional heft and outcomes of trauma that may have benefited proceedings.

Ray Winstone's lumbering and mumbling bad guy may be one of the weakest set down in the MCU, and his power of control is too easily and obviously thrown into the narrative mix. (The Harvey Weinstein parallels are too many and too obvious.)

The other male of the proceedings David Harbour fares perhaps a little better as Romanoff's father, a paunchy overweight Russian super soldier equivalent of Captain America, the Red Guardian, whose obsession lies with his own place in the past, and whether Steve Rogers ever spoke of him. Most of the movie's comic relief comes from his bumbling and quips, but the film does much to highlight the inadequacies of men throughout.

Thankfully, Pugh proves to be the film's masterstroke - though somewhat depressingly, she feels like she shoves to one side Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow throughout. From mocking Romanoff's penchant for posing when landing to a punky and curt way with oneliners, Pugh's former child assassin Yelena is the tonic the series needs and is clearly being groomed to be a major player in the upcoming clutch of films.

There are some crisp action scenes to revel in too - even if early on, it feels like Black Widow is content to only be a chase movie, with some balletic and tautly choreographed one-on-one action scenes.

A final sequence involving debris, chaos and destruction stands out for never really losing focus on its main players, and for executing a degree of CGI anarchy that's consistent with the most bloated parts of the MCU's desire for destruction.

But in among it all, there's a terrible feeling that Johansson's Widow has been robbed of a degree of agency and urgency in her own film.

With her demise clear in Avengers: Endgame, placing her in peril throughout the spy caper seems largely redundant, given the knowledge nothing can truly touch her. And then coupling that with sidelining her as more of a co-lead with Pugh's Yelena may push up the elements of family to the fore, but it does little to leave you with the feeling that this is a Black Widow movie.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with Black Widow - it delivers on a family dysfunction well, and plays on the themes of male / female control, while never losing sight of the Marvel blockbuster behemoth trappings. 

While it may subvert your expectations for a female superhero Marvel piece and play on the violence experienced by females in the world, Black Widow doesn't quite present the psychological depth for its own seemingly tortured protagonist - despite offering up some impressively executed action sequences and the next great MCU hope in the form of Pugh.