Certificate: 12A
Running time: 134 minutes
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, Rachel Weisz, David Harbour, Ray Winstone
Directed by: Cate Shortland
The story: Natasha Romanoff must revisit the dark secrets of her past when a dangerous conspiracy leads her to confront villains from her previous life.
The verdict: As one of the founding members of The Avengers and a core character from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is hard to believe that it’s taken this long for Black Widow to get a film of her own. Add in the film’s delayed release date due to the pandemic, and it feels like we’ve been waiting for this film forever. But, finally Phase four of the MCU has officially begun!
Set just after Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow takes us back in time to events that fans will be very familiar with. However, this time we get to see what Natasha was up to during her time on the run before then taking a journey into her past. This all adds to Natasha’s character and backstory and is something that fans will really enjoy and appreciate.
Black Widow introduces audiences to some new characters and I thought that these were all great additions. Marvel films work best when the chemistry between the characters is on point and there is definitely some great chemistry in Black Widow. In particular, Scarlett Johansson and Florence Pugh are brilliant together and some of the film’s best lines come from their exchanges.
David Harbour and Rachel Weisz also have great chemistry and overall the quartet are really fun to watch together. If any of these new characters had their own spinoff, then I’d definitely watch it.
As with any Marvel film, big action sequences can be expected and of course Black Widow is no different. There are also a lot of hand to hand combat fight scenes, and you could argue that these are even better than the bigger action sequences.
Black Widow does have a few issues. I felt that Ray Winstone was a little one note as a villain and as audiences already know Natasha’s fate then some audiences may feel that the film has little to no stakes. I also couldn’t help but feel that there were some really serious subject matters bubbling under the surface that weren’t fully explored and something felt slightly off about that to me.
Overall, I don’t think that Black Widow is MCU’s best addition but it is definitely a welcome one. As a Marvel super fan, I’ll admit to being biased but I thoroughly enjoyed this. After being starved of a Marvel film release for two years, going to see Black Widow was like being given water in the desert. I can’t wait to see where Phase Four goes next.
The rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
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