Black Widow
Directed by: Cate Shortland
Written by: Eric Pearson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, O-T Fagbenle, Ray Winstone, William Hurt, Ever Anderson, Violet McGraw
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 133 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jul 2021
Written by: Eric Pearson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, O-T Fagbenle, Ray Winstone, William Hurt, Ever Anderson, Violet McGraw
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi - 133 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 6 Jul 2021
I knew it! In 2009, my future wife and I took a trip to Scandinavia. As we sailed on a ferry up various fjords surrounded by tall mountains and interspersed with miniscule villages and hamlets, we agreed this would be the perfect location to hideout should we ever need to do something like that. We must have been onto something because this is where Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) opts to keep her head down after the events of 2016’s Captain America: Civil War, the division of the Avengers, and her status as a wanted criminal by super-serious government agencies. Director Cate Shortland, first time director of a massive budget, action-packed extravaganza, leans on her past of character-driven indies to show Marvel audiences the turning point events which shaped Natasha Romanoff and even introduce us to a wider Romanoff family.
I remember watching Shortland’s 2004 film, Somersault, in theaters way back when. It’s been chic these last few years for blockbuster studios to pluck obscure indie directors to front impossibly large films with global reach, but opting for Shortland may be the biggest reach so far. If it was to put a director in charge to emphasize how family dynamics, or the lack of them, shape individual actions, then Black Widow is a most appropriate match. The new Avenger spin-off film and half prequel / half side-story fill-in is rich in family lore, however synthetic it is to some members of the family.
I remember watching Shortland’s 2004 film, Somersault, in theaters way back when. It’s been chic these last few years for blockbuster studios to pluck obscure indie directors to front impossibly large films with global reach, but opting for Shortland may be the biggest reach so far. If it was to put a director in charge to emphasize how family dynamics, or the lack of them, shape individual actions, then Black Widow is a most appropriate match. The new Avenger spin-off film and half prequel / half side-story fill-in is rich in family lore, however synthetic it is to some members of the family.
Natasha (Scarlett Johansson, Jojo Rabbit) weathers two broken families in her standalone film. We’ve already seen one of them implode back in Civil War. Team Iron Man and Team Captain America went their separate ways and those consequences continue to reverberate. The second family dissolves in Black Widow’s first scenes and the severity and suddenness of its dissipation not only skews Natasha’s lens on life, but also that of her younger sister Yelena. Natasha was old enough to know some of the family’s secrets and a bit more emotionally put together to handle the stark transition to her next life. Young Yelena knew nothing of her real circumstances and is easily the film’s most sympathetic character.
Older Yelena (Florence Pugh) followed in Natasha’s footsteps. She’s a ‘Widow’ working on behalf of a nefarious, yet obscure, puppet master. Abruptly brought out of her operational, hypnotic fog, Yelena involves her older sister, and eventually, the other members of her shattered, long-forgotten family, to confront the mastermind and perhaps one of the globe’s most unseen string pullers. The steady stitch work of putting the family back together is Black Widow’s high-point, not the out of this world, near-death action sequences to put mom, dad, and the girls together, but their interactions once the connections are remade.
Dad, Alexei aka The Red Guardian (David Harbour, Suicide Squad), has enjoyed the luxuries of a Russian gulag for the past few decades. Alexei has super strength and appears to be an abandoned attempt to make a Soviet super soldier ala Captain America, but his test and evaluation overlords seem to find him better suited for prison life. Alexei’s unearned bravado and strutting machismo provide one of the film’s better leitmotifs, but he is a transparent paragon of ignorant honesty compared to mom, Melina (Rachel Weisz, The Favourite). Melina is the most likely candidate for the prequel we really want to see. There are layers of this onion which could carry one of those Disney Plus series like WandaVision or Loki.
It's no secret from hints and brief interludes from earlier Marvel films that Natasha Romanoff sprung from ignoble and callous beginnings. While Black Widow goes a long way in showing us the hows, the whys, and the what fors, and the opening montage is set to an über-slow, female emo version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, this somewhat origin story is not a sad sack Soviet, Tolstoy tragedy. There are laughs and smiles. There is redemption. There is the world’s most incoherent family which makes yours looks like The Waltons. And remember…the fjords. Get lost, lay low, the fjords are your friends.
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