It has taken far too long to find its way to our screens, but Black Widow is finally here. It is arguable that a standalone film should have happened much earlier, especially after the success of Iron Man 2 and the positive reaction to the character. That it then got delayed again due to the pandemic means we had to wait even longer.
Despite that wait, the good news is that it has been well worth it. With a story co-written by Jac Shaeffer, who created WandaVision, this is the MCU firing on all cylinders. It feels like an MCU film and delivers everything you want it to. It also does so without resorting to any antics that would be considered especially eye rolling prequel tropes and keeps its feet firmly in the MCU timeline.
Set after ‘Captain America: Civil War’ the general thrust of the plot involves Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) reconnecting with her past, while on the run from the authorities. This clever placement in the timeline means that Black Widow is free of any troublesome ties to any organisations and able to explore the character’s past without going back too far. What we get therefore is something that isn’t too derivative, but does also dive into familiar territory. It’s a nice balance that could easily have tipped too far into a hackneyed nightmare, had they not given it a fresh spin.
The whole thing opens in the Ohio suburbs with Natasha and Yelena (Florence Pugh) being the daughters in a Russian sleeper cell, headed up by Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). It fills in some blanks perfectly, but also underlines the source of the running themes of sibling rivalry, family, and loss of identity. It also gives a useful perspective on Alexei and Melina for what comes afterward.
It is to this group that Natasha gets pulled back to when the ‘Taskmaster’, controlled by Dreykov (Ray WInstone), comes literally slamming into her life while she’s hiding out. This sets her on the path to try to address ‘The Red Room’ and her traumatic upbringing once and for all. While Dreykov does come across as a bit of a pantomime villain, this is done knowingly, and having Natasha recite lines while watching Moonraker is a definite nod to that.
First of all she finds Yelena, who is now an extremely capable Black Widow herself, and then later her ‘Parents’. In many ways Pugh steals the show with her portrayal of Yelena, acting almost as the heart of the film, and she has no problems emphatically and confidently lighting up the screen. She also imbues the film with a lot of humour, and like the rest of the film is funny in the right way, including skilfully handling Yelena mocking Natasha for her superhero landing.
Similarly, Harbour’s Alexei, who is also the Red Guardian, the Russian version of Captain America, gives not just a full action performance, but also a tender, bumbling emotional one. He’s out of shape, but still a force to be reckoned with. This is allied with a bittersweet nostalgia of past glories, his yearning for simple things, and his old family.
This isn’t a film that relies solely on the melodrama though, even if it definitely fits into that MCU emotional mold. Like the rest of the MCU, this has action, and its sequences are suitably preposterous, with several elements being way beyond realistic. This is as we would expect though and anyone wanting the explosions and fights is most certainly catered for.
Ultimately, this is a fun outing and the film that Black Widow has deserved for many years. Now that the past has had its grey areas filled in though, it is time to look towards the future. Reassuringly, what comes across here is that the fantastic Florence Pugh doesn’t just deliver an interesting character, she demonstrates that she is an extremely safe pair of hands for the future of Black Widow.
