A Review of “Black Widow (2021)”

I think Kevin Feige is an amazing producer, but I always felt it was so dumb that it took so long for Black Widow to have her film. What is more jarring that this came out after Endgame which concluded her story. Nevertheless, it is here and I was still kind of hype for it despite it all. The premise is “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”. So is this another MCU hit or a miss?

Firstly, the supporting cast is all stellar. David Harbour as Red Guardian was hilarious and he was incredibly charming even if his character was kind of an ass. Rachel Weisz was also great as Melina, the fake mother of Natasha, as she gives a performance that conveys the conflict her character is going through yet also being quite lovable. Florence Pugh as Yelena, Natasha’s sister, is the true stand out in this film. Her performance is so charismatic and charming while also being a proper badass. Her character has the most vulnerability compared to everyone else and Florence’s shows this by really delivering on the emotional performance. She also has great chemistry with Scarlett Johansson so the interaction between Yelena and Natasha are some of the biggest highlights of Black Widow. Scarlett is also still phenomenal as Natasha and she still delivers here as well. We get to see more emotion from her character which allows Scarlett to do a lot more and shine in these scenes.

The music score is composed by legendary composer Lorne Balfe and he continues to make another amazing score for Black Widow. Every action scene feels more hype whenever his score is being blasted and it’s just awesome. The emotional scenes become more emotional and the tense scenes become more tense thanks to his score. I also really love the action scenes, for the most part. The hand-to-hand fights felt gritty and brutal which made it very entertaining to watch. There is also a pretty cool car chase and a fight where Black Widow has to fight countless other Red Room assassins which were very enjoyable as well.

However, the story is quite a mixed bag for me thanks to how it is executed. The movie does a lot of telling of her past rather than showing which is kind of disappointing. I think seeing the red ledger stuff she did as a Red Room assassin would’ve given the ending more impact. Additionally, Black Widow explores the theme of family but handles it quite poorly. Natasha confronting her fake family is emotional stuff and the movie does show it but it would then deflect it with a silly joke which did get annoying. This is terrible when it came to the dad, Red Guardian. The movie treats him like a joke even though he did an incredibly terrible thing that caused his fake daughters to dislike him. There is a moment where he does start trying to repair his relationship with his daughters which was very sweet but the story doesn’t stay long enough on this. He also doesn’t get a moment to show how much he cares for his daughter which disappointed me. I did have my issue with how jokes are used in MCU movies but I think it is more annoying here than it is in previous MCU movies. The story is also very low stakes and because of Endgame, there doesn’t feel like there is much danger to our main characters.

The action scenes near the end are quite disappointing as well. There is a fight between the Red Guardian and Taskmaster which sounds on paper cool as both have some kind of superpower. However, the editing had lots of cuts with also constantly cutting away to something else which made it jarring. Additionally, Red Guardian, despite having super strength, never gets to show this in the fight. There is also a final fight between Black Widow and Taskmaster at the end which is mostly a CGI fest but is also incredibly short as well. It was a disappointing final fight for sure. On that note, the villains in Black Widow are also very disappointing. Dreykov, the leader of the Red Room, doesn’t even have much of a presence on the plot until 40 minutes in. Even when they start appearing, they still have no presence as the plot is more focused on getting the family together than villains doing something. Taskmaster may be the most disappointing villain in MCU history. They are such a deviation from the comic as Taskmaster never speaks ever. There is also a reveal about Taskmaster that is just lame.

Overall, Black Widow is a movie I feel so incredibly conflicted about. The story and villains are quite poor but there are moments in it that are very good. The characters and performances by actors are all great but some characters don’t get enough to shine. The action scenes are entertaining but it does stumble near the end. Black Widow is a movie with a lot of good that contains some bumps throughout. In the end, I am glad it finally came out and I enjoyed watching it even though it does feel a bit too late.