Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is on the run after doing something Avengers-related.
Running into her sister Yelena (Florence Pugh), Natasha finds herself mixed up with her former employer the Red Room. In order to finally destroy them once and for all, she will need to pull her former ‘family’ together: Yelena, ‘father’ Alexei (David Harbour) and ‘mother’ Melina (Rachel Weisz).
It has been a couple years since I saw a Marvel movie. I think the last one of these things I watched was Captain Marvel.
Black Widow sounded like an interesting idea. The character is essentially a secret agent with no powers, which immediately made it more interesting to me.
And the supporting cast for this one was totally my speed: Florence Pugh? Rachel Weisz? David Harbour?
I tried to leave my expectations at the door. I was not interested in the broader continuity. I just wanted to see this movie - particularly since it dealt with a character who had no superpowers AND she was a former secret agent fighting other secret agents. THAT sounded right up my alley.
Watching this movie, I second-guessed myself about what was working and not working in this movie from a dramatic point of view.
This is not the same as what I liked and did not like about the movie, which I think will be the focus of this review.
Even though I have not watched all of the Marvel movies I have watched enough of them and their pretenders to recognise their essence.
While this movie is shielded by being a stand-alone adventure, it still feels like an interesting dramatic idea that has been shaved down and smoothed out.
Most of the time I watch a Marvel movie, there is something solid and unmoving at the centre - whoever the main character is. This is an effect of the narrative template Marvel’s brain trust have committed to - the characters cannot change because they need to keep making movies. Every movie is a piece of a broader puzzle.
There is also the ‘house style’ of the movies, particularly the visual style and the rote third act.
I feel like this movie is genuinely trying to move in its own direction but it feels like a paint job rather than a new car.
Cate Shortland is an indie filmmaker with a distinctive vision - I enjoyed her last picture Berlin Syndrome, and there are some elements of that style here. But it feels diluted and weirdly superficial - there is some use of shallow focus and moments of the camera holding on small character moments.
I find it difficult to review these movies because I feel like we are still stuck in the middle of the Marvel assembly line, and it makes it hard for me to really analyse this movie on its own terms.
I can say I liked the movie far more than I thought I would, and it has a lot to do with the new blood: Florence Pugh and David Harbour especially are bringing an energy and uniqueness that frankly saved the movie.
Florence Pugh is so good as Yelena it crystallised how I felt about the movie’s star.
Scarlett Johansson, no matter how hard she tries, never quite convinces as a tortured killer. They have tried to foreground this in previous movies, like The Winter Soldier, but I never believed it. She is also so specifically American that her background never clicked with me.
With Pugh, she brings an authority and a sense of history that Johansson does not. Pugh always brings an old soul quality. She also has a darkness - there is an anger to the performances I have seen which always gives her characters an intensity.
That being said, Johansson and her have good chemistry, and I believed them as sisters. The scene where she parodies Natasha’s familiar action pose is a highlight of the movie. It was one of the few times the film’s heroine feels vulnerable.
The scene that really crystallised how great Pugh is for this movie is Yelena’s breakdown when she finally confronts her ‘parents’. All the trauma that the sisters have had to deal with and repress comes out and it is so much bigger than this movie can sustain. That scene is so sad and complicated that I started to wonder if this movie would have worked better sans Natasha - although I doubt whether this tragedy would have been given any more room to breathe.
David Harbour is a great actor. He is one of the few things that get me excited in Quantom of Solace, another spy movie in too much of a hurry to deal with the complicated emotions at its core. And he is great here - his reappearance as the Red Guardian is a joy. He is the closest thing this movie has to a Han Solo and I wish the movie had more of him, and gave his character a better arc.
The scene where Yelena cracks and tells him how she loved him as her dad is such a jolt of emotion that I thought it would be part of a big character turn - but he does not get any of that.
Going back to that family reunion sequence it highlighted how cold and perfunctory the rest of this movie feels - this is a movie that is meant to be a cog in a bigger money-making machine, but rarely does it justify itself beyond that.
It is a shame because I liked the middle chunk of this movie and I loved the family reunion. It felt like the movie was gaining its own personality. The family dynamic and the comedy started to feel more natural and organic.
While the best parts of the movie are the dynamics between the ‘family’ of ex-agents, although I feel like Rachel Weisz is too marginalised for how important her character is to the sisters - there is a beautifully complicated nugget of an idea, that this woman unintentionally gave Natasha and Yelena the strength to hold onto their humanity. It felt like the filmmakers could not figure out how to resolve this character’s complicated morality - her loyalty to the villains, her work in mind control and her seemingly genuine affection for the younger women.
Considering the ‘twist’ that takes place during the third act, I have a suspicion the script wants to keep her intentions obscure so that the reveals about her character will have impact, but those reveals are so predictable I would have preferred the movie maintained that ambiguity.
Frankly these characters are not good people and the movie is too concerned with momentum and spectacle to delve into them.
And then the third act happens and I checked out. There is a nod to Moonraker (which Natasha is watching earlier in the movie) but it felt so familiar in its spectacle and airlessness that the attempt at character redemption and coming together was muffled.
It made me remember how effortless the focus on family is in The Fast & Furious movies. This movie is striving for something similar, but it has to end so that Natasha can rejoin the mainline franchise. That ending might have resonance for viewers who have watched the last couple of Avengers movies, but I felt shortchanged.
It all felt depressingly familiar in how inconsequential it is. The big problem is that there is an inherent darkness to this story, particularly around themes of autonomy, reproductive choice and agency, that the film never really engages with.
Considering this movie feature little in the way of superpowers, I was looking forward to seeing more of a straight ahead action movie - but there is such a familiarity to the staging and editing that I could not get involved.
Natasha is meant to be a great secret agent - but the movie does not highlight her weaknesses as a human being. She slides and falls and lands with the same elasticity as her super-powered co-stars.
Even as speectale it is not fun. There was an opportunity here to do something more lo-fi and covert, but it is lost. I read a quote somewhere from a Marvel director who had no previous experience with action. He said Kevin Fiege reassured him that he did not have to worry because they had an established second unit who could handle the set pieces. It does feel like the spectacle part of the movie is seperate from the story, and the sequences feel slick and airless. There is no danger or threat to the characters.
While it has a few glimmers of greatness, Black Widow ultimately feels too much like a cookie cutter Marvel movie and not enough of its own thing. Maybe in ten years, what is special about this movie will shine through - but for now, it just feels trapped by the formula.
If you are new to this blog, I also co-host a podcast on James Bond, The James Bond Cocktail Hour.
You can subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.
