Black Widow

 

If Cate Shortland's Black Widow was as sure-footed as its leading character, the film might have more staying power. For a Marvel "origins" picture, it spends most of its screen time on Natasha Romanoff's discovery of her past through present battles with old foes and new (or rediscovered) allies. Shortland has assembled a half dozen exciting action pieces on both sides of the human story, which gives the movie tones that are mixed but not necessarily well-matched.

We're told that Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) was one of many "widow" soldiers bought or kidnapped as children and turned into lethal weapons by the diabolical Dreykov (Ray Winstone) for purposes that are not entirely clear, although one might assume, this being a Marvel story, it has something to do with vanquishing Shield or the Avengers.

In its strange prologue, we're introduced to the 10-year-old Natasha, her younger sister, Yelena (played as an adult by Florence Pugh), and their parents, Russian agents Alexei (David Harbour) and Melina (Rachel Weisz). It's strange because it spends no time establishing for us the connections shared by this quartet, choosing to rely on familiar narrative constructs as shorthand and devoting most of the opening to a daring airplane escape (from whom is not clear) to Cuba, where the girls are delivered to Dreykov.

The picture's two hundred million dollars bought a lot of locations and vehicular destruction, but the banter (what would an MCU film be without banter) between Johansson and Pugh and Harbour's scenes as the regretful, washed-up, incarcerated former Russian Super Soldier the Red Guardian are priceless.