'Black Widow' Review: Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh star as sisters reunited in this emotional and action-packed addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe
demanded—and deserved—to be taken on its own terms, “Black Widow” is the one.
A Marvel adventure that forgoes Marvel templates, it doesn’t pretend to be cosmic—no chance of a supervillain like Thanos turning the other half of the people on our planet to dust. It isn’t even epic, and certainly isn’t flawless. Much of the production plays like a conventional espionage thriller, though one with some action sequences of spectacular elegance.
Yet it’s an affecting link, a tribute to a fallen Avenger who died halfway through “Avengers: Endgame” in a startling act of self-sacrifice. Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow figured importantly in several episodes, but did not have a movie of her own until this one, which was stylishly directed by the Australian filmmaker Cate Shortland from a screenplay by Eric Pearson.
Those questions are framed by a preface, set in Ohio in 1995, that finds Natasha and Yelena—portrayed as sweet-spirited girls by, respectively, Ever Anderson and Violet McGraw—playing happily in lyrical slo-mo shots that might have been lifted from some Steven Spielberg vision of the American suburbs. But they are living in the bosom of a family that can’t be taken at face value. David Harbour is the face of the father and Russian supersoldier Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian.
Two decades later Natasha is off the grid and on the run, a former Russian spy pursued by an assortment of shadowy adversaries who want her dead. Her death is far in the future, of course. “Black Widow” takes place before she became an Avenger, and gave her life for the sake of the supportive surrogate family she finally found.
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