- Directed by Cate Shortland, Black Widow is a surprisingly effective sendoff for a character who never really worked and an actress who never seemed very committed to the part. It's amazing what you can accomplish with thoughtful writing, a talented cast, and a skilled director! I was initially a little worried when the film's title sequence deployed an embarrassing cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and became even more concerned upon spotting footage from Moonraker, but thankfully these proved to be minor dips in an otherwise positive trajectory. Maybe I should have been distressed over the fact that Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) died a couple of movies ago, but everybody seems okay with ignoring that.
- At the risk of sounding trite, Black Widow is a film about family. Young Natasha (Ever Anderson) appears to have the ideal American family, and that's entirely by design. Her parents Alexei and Melina (David Harbour and Rachel Weisz) are in fact Russian agents forced to flee to Cuba after a successful espionage mission. Natasha and her sister Yelena (Violet McGraw) have been trained for this eventuality, however, and Natasha even pilots the plane that enables their escape. Sure, it's upsetting to see mom get shot while dad potshots S.H.I.E.L.D. agents from the airplane wing, but the ease with which Alexei hands off the kids to their Soviet handlers suggests that he's not all that attached.
- Those handlers make up Natasha and Yelena's second family, who are part of a training program called the Red Room. The father figure in that case is a Russian general named Dreykov (Ray Winstone), who trains the girls and their sisters on all the finer points of assassination. When the now-grown Yelena (Florence Pugh) is liberated from Dreykov's chemical brainwashing, however, she enlists the help of her sister to take down the Red Room once and for all. Nevermind that Natasha thought she killed Dreykov and his daughter (Olga Kurylenko) years ago. You can probably guess how all of this relates to the brutal masked mimic known as Taskmaster, and...hey, who drew the creepy teeth on that mask?!
- While Taskmaster keeps that weird mask on a little too long to be interesting, the rest of the film proves to be surprisingly compelling, featuring the best fighting and action sequences outside of the Captain America movies. The film includes just enough subtext about the subjugation of women to be interesting without ever forgetting that the primary job of any Marvel movie is to provide escapist entertainment. Although Johansson admittedly saves her best Black Widow performance for last, she is overshadowed by Pugh, who is absolutely perfect in the role and a welcome addition to the MCU. Weisz is great and Harbour is perpetually hilarious, particularly when describing himself in terms of his American arch-nemesis that even the movie admits he may never have met. It's a shame it took thirteen years to generate a Marvel film led by women that is also good (sorry, Captain Marvel!), but at least it finally happened.
- O-T Fagbenle is in the film primarily as a Taskmaster decoy for the publicity tour (I guess?), while William Hurt and Julia Louis-Dreyfus show up for cross-promotional synergy or something.
- Ever Anderson is the daughter of Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich.
