BLACK WIDOW (2021) - Review
Updated: Jul 31, 2021
It is said that a movie is only as good as its villain, if that were the case this movie would have been atrocious. The newest addition to MCU’s shared universe in 2021, Black Widow, is an action spy thriller directed by Cate Shortland based on the Marvel comic book character of the same name. The screenplay is by Eric Pearson the writer behind some of the Marvel movies (Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Thor, Spider-Man, and the ABC TV shows). The movie stars Scarlet Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow alongside Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz.
Synopsis - Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.
The one thing that is common in all of the MCU movies is that the movies are focused on setting up future movies and spinoffs, the wheel must keep on turning they say. “Black Widow” is no different. Let’s set the record straight - the only reason we are getting this movie is that its purpose was to set up a character that can replace Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow in future Marvel projects. It wasn’t for the fans and you will realize that once you watch the movie.
Even though Black Widow wasn’t on Marvel studios' top of the list of making movies, it still is a pretty good movie. I wouldn’t exactly call it an origin story as we don’t get to see Natasha Romanoff take on the mantle of Black Widow, but rather we get to see glimpses of her past. This movie feels inspired by lots of other spy thriller movies like “Jason Bourne”, “Mission Impossible” and “James Bond”, to name a few, and is different enough to be original.
The performances in the movie were top notch most noticeable being Scarlet Johansson’s performance as Black Widow and Florence Pugh’s performance as Yalena Boleva. I think Florence Pugh outshined Scarlet Johansson.
The action scenes in the movie were jaw-droppingly good and the hand-to-hand combat scenes were outstanding. The use of shaky cam didn’t feel out of place, the one other Marvel movie that used shaky camera technique perfectly was “Captain America: Winter Soldier”. This could have gone sideways had the action scenes involved too much shaky cam.
Like most of the Marvel movies, the major issue with this movie is its villain. Well to be honest Marvel isn’t known for its compelling villains. The Taskmaster who is part of the Red Room had all the reasons to hate Natasha but still, the creators chose not to go with that and made her also a victim of Dreykov and the Red Room. Another major villain is Dreykov who runs the Red Room. He is your typical power-hungry bad guy who wants to control the world with the help of his Black Widows and he is not compelling enough. Luckily that didn’t affect the movie much.
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