The opening sequence of Black Widow, in which a young Natasha and Yelena are bundled out of their Ohio home in the middle of the night by two adults pretending to be their parents, establishes the film's most interesting subject: not the superhero, but the person the programme tried to erase. That Cate Shortland's film only intermittently lives up to that premise is the source of its central frustration.
At a Glance
Director: Cate Shortland
Runtime: 134 minutes
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone
Release: 2021
Critics Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, a solid espionage thriller let down by its villain and its finale)
Audience Rating: ★★★ (3/5 stars, enjoyable until it isn't)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Natasha Romanoff is forced to confront her past when a conspiracy involving the Red Room resurfaces. Reuniting with her surrogate family, including her sister Yelena, her ersatz father the Red Guardian, and her ersatz mother Melina, she sets out to destroy the programme and free the Widows still under its control. The espionage elements of the opening act are the film's strongest, with a Budapest sequence and a prison break providing entertaining set-pieces. The conclusion retreats into a floating fortress climax that feels imported from a different and less interesting film, abandoning the intimate, character-driven tone that had distinguished the first hour.
Characters
The film's greatest achievement is Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova, a character who arrives fully formed and immediately threatens to overshadow the film's nominal lead. Pugh brings a dry wit, a physical ferocity, and emotional depth to the role that makes Yelena one of the MCU's most engaging new characters. Johansson is as focused as ever, and the film gives her more emotional range than any previous MCU appearance, even if the solo film's placement in the timeline means that range is deployed in service of a story whose stakes are already known. David Harbour's Red Guardian is a broad comic creation that the film deploys with reasonable skill, finding the pathos beneath the bluster with a warmth that makes the character more than a joke. Rachel Weisz brings her customary intelligence and authority to Melina, and her scenes with Johansson have a quiet tension the film does not always give sufficient room to develop. Ray Winstone's Dreykov is a significant problem: a man of almost no personality whose menace is asserted rather than demonstrated, and whose defeat feels correspondingly unsatisfying.
Tone
Shortland pitches the film as a grounded action thriller in the mould of the Bourne films, and the approach works well in the opening hour. The action is physical and kinetic, with a hand-to-hand combat style that suits Natasha's particular skill set and gives the film a distinctive register within the MCU's broader action vocabulary. The tonal shift in the closing act is jarring and ultimately damaging, replacing the film's more interesting ambitions with a climax that could have come from any number of MCU films.
Meaning / Themes
Black Widow is a film about the long shadow of trauma and the difficulty of building an identity after it has been systematically dismantled. Natasha and Yelena were both shaped by a programme designed to strip them of agency and selfhood, and the film is at its most thoughtful when it explores what that means for who they are now. The theme of chosen family gives the film an emotional core that its more spectacular elements cannot match, and the dynamic between the four central characters, a fake family that has become something more complicated and more real, is the film's most affecting element.
Direction
Shortland's direction is precise and purposeful in the film's first half, with a strong command of the action sequences and a clear sense of how to build character through behaviour rather than exposition. The Budapest sequence is a standout, and the prison break is inventive and well-staged. The finale feels like it was directed by committee, with the floating fortress climax lacking the specificity and personality that had set the earlier sequences apart. The film's visual identity is strongest when it is operating as an espionage thriller, and weakest when it is required to function as a formulaic blockbuster finish.
Cultural Reception
Black Widow received solid reviews on its release and performed reasonably well commercially, though its theatrical run was complicated by its simultaneous release on Disney+ Premier Access, which generated significant controversy and a public dispute between Johansson and Disney over her compensation. The lawsuit was eventually settled out of court. Critics praised Pugh's performance and the film's opening act, while noting the weak villain and the conventional finale. It is now regarded as a decent but frustrating MCU entry, a film that demonstrated Pugh's star quality and set up Yelena as a compelling future character while failing to give Johansson's Natasha the conclusion her decade of service to the franchise deserved.
Final Verdict: A solid but ultimately disappointing film that squanders too much of its potential on a formulaic climax. Pugh is remarkable and largely justifies the film's existence on her own, but Dreykov is one of the MCU's weakest villains, the timeline placement undermines the dramatic stakes, and the film never quite becomes the grounded thriller it promises to be in its opening hour.