Black Widow

Official Australian release date: 8/7/21. Viewed: 9/7/21.

Director: Cate Shortland

Actors: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: M

‘Black Widow’ is the latest MCU film, taking place after ‘Captain America: Civil War’ and before ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, where we get to see Natasha Romanoff (Johansson) doing her bad-ass spy thing solo. Or mostly solo – she’s joined, at times, by her “unique” family: father Alexi (Harbour), mother Melina (Weisz) and sister Yelena (Pugh). There’s plenty of backstory there and it’s well handled.

Having Pugh & Harbour actually added way more humour than I was expecting, which was good to see and helped keep things moving. However, this is primarily a Bond-style action-packed car-chase into explosion into hand-to-hand-combat film. And that’s what ‘Black Widow’ should be – she has no super-powers, after all. The plot involves Natasha going after “the Red Room”, which is the spy agency that programmed her to be an assassin. Dreykov (Winstone) and the skull-helmeted semi-cyborg (no spoilers!) are OK as the bad guys, even if they don’t have that much screen time.

Pretty satisfying conclusion, with the post-credits scene linking back into some of the Marvel TV shows. I enjoyed all the scenes with Harbour, but Pugh steals the show, with some solid stunts/fights, but mostly her well-placed quips. It’s also a fitting conclusion if this is the last time we see Johansson as Black Widow, as she’s so assured in the role that you feel light at home when she’s on screen. Bring on Phase 4!

Overall: well-made Marvel backstory.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.