Movie Review: Black Widow
SciFi.Radio (formerly Krypton Radio, Sci-Fi for your Wi-Fi) published two movie reviews of Black Widow, one by Gareth von Kallenbach, one by me. Click the links to read the original reviews. Check out SciFi.radio on a regular basis. Feel free to donate to our Patreon campaign.
Black Widow is the 24th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Like many other Hollywood projects, it was delayed by Covid. It was (in my opinion) an OK movie, but not a great movie. Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow, is one of my favorite characters in the MCU. I’d been waiting impatiently for her to get her solo movie since 2012. In my opinion, this movie wasn’t worth the wait.
“Black Widow is an action-packed film, full of fisticuffs and explosions. The fight choreographers, the stunt performers, and special effects crew, especially the pyrotechnicians, certainly earned their paychecks. It is rated PG-13 for violence and profanity.”
Any MCU fan knows to wait for the credits and the inevitable post-credits scene. The post-credit scene in BW didn’t make any sense. It was supposed to introduce a new character to the MCU, and if had come out as originally scheduled, it would have: Contessa Valentina Allegra de Fontaine. Apparently, she’s already made her debut in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which I haven’t seen yet. In the comic books, Valentina is a SHIELD agent and Nick Fury’s mistress. I don’t think she is in the MCU, but I can’t tell who or what she’s supposed to be. In fact, my family and I were whispering to each other: trying to tell if Julia Louis-Dreyfus was Rachel Weisz and if so, why was Yelena calling her Valentina instead of Melina? It turned out to be a different actress and a different character, but at the time none of us were sure.
Jewelry: I liked that Natasha wore the arrow necklace she wore in Captain America: the Winter Soldier. It was a nice bit of continuity. I disliked that both Natasha and Yelena had multiple earrings. Fighters should not wear earrings. They get caught on things in combat. Look up what happened to the Spanish women who survived the Siege of Badajoz (1812).
I would have liked more emphasis on the beginning of the movie when Natasha and Yelena were leading a normal suburban American life as the daughters of Soviet sleeper agents. We soon learn their family is not ordinary …even by espionage standards … but how extraordinary their parents are is not explained for at least an hour.
There is also little on Natasha and Yelena in the Red Room, where they were trained to be assassins and spies (and it is implied, femmes fatales).
Yelena, whose existence I never heard of before this movie, contacts Natasha when she is on the run from the events of Captain America: Civil War, to let her know she failed to kill someone she should have killed years. Yelena wants to rectify this error with her big sister’s help. IMDB.com lists Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova as a series regular in the upcoming Disney+ show Hawkeye.
At one point in the movie, Natasha mistakes the Taskmaster as one of Thunderbolt Ross’ agents. It turned out she was mistaken and Taskmaster was the minion of someone else altogether. However, because of Natasha’s mistaken guess, I wasted time I should have been paying attention to the movie trying to recollect old comic books I hadn’t read in years, and compare them to Taskmaster.
“So much happened so fast that I had trouble keeping up. Your mileage may vary; I have a medical condition that affects my ability to focus.”
The cast was superb:
- Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanova, the Black Widow
- Florence Pugh as Yelena (Angela in Malevolent, Abbie Mortimer in The Falling)
- O-T Fagbenle as Mason (Joe in Breaking and Entering, Luke Bankole in The Handmaid’s Tale), an absolute scene-stealer — expect to see him again
- David Harbour as Akexei Shostakov (Hellboy in the 2019 Hellboy, Dexter Tolliver in Suicide Squad, Gregg Beam in Quantum of Solace)
- Ray Winstone as General Dreykov (Will Scarlett in Robin of Sherwood, George McHale in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)
For a better organized movie review, check out the two links in the first paragraph. It wasn’t bad. I’m glad we saw it. But if you go see it, save a few dollars and go to a matinee.
