The best superhero movies have a substantial human element that helps ground (if only a bit) the landscape-leveling mayhem that dominates the excessive third act.
Black Panther and the first Wonder Woman come to mind, as recent good examples.
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| Pausing for breath, while trying to evade the well-named Taskmaster, Natasha (Scarlett Johansson, left) and Yelena (Florence Pugh) contemplate their next move. |
The script — by Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer and Ned Benson — gets its emotional juice from a fractured family dynamic that prompts all manner of interpersonal angst. The result, directed with welcome levels of heart and pathos by Cate Shortland, skillfully balances the slugfests and action sequences with quieter, contemplative moments.
This is appropriate, because the title character — Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka the Black Widow — has one of the more complicated back-stories in Marvel Comics lore (which this film’s scripters have made darker still).
That said, at 133 minutes, Shortland’s film is at least one frantic melee too long.
In terms of the ever-more-convoluted Marvel movie timeline, the primary events here take place in the immediate wake of 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The various Avengers are dividing via their response to increased governmental surveillance at the expense of personal freedom; Natasha is on the run, having (apparently) betrayed SHIELD and U.S. Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt). He wants her head.
First, though, this new film opens with a seemingly bucolic 1995 flashback that focuses on adolescent Natasha (Ever Anderson) and her younger sister, Yelena (Violet McGraw). We meet them during carefree, girlish play in suburban Ohio, watched lovingly by mom Melina (Rachel Weisz). But this illusion of white-picket-fence ordinariness is shattered when dad Alexei (David Harbour) arrives home, clearly agitated.
And we’re suddenly plunged into a Marvel Universe riff on TV’s The Americans.
Melina and Alexei are Russian spies, having lived in Ohio as “deep cover” operatives for three years. The latter has just completed their mission, and they must leave now-now-NOW, in order to evade the U.S. government agents hot on his heels. Natasha, old enough to know she prefers their current surroundings to her earlier life in Russia, is horrified to the point of tears; Yelena is too young to have a point of reference.
Both young actresses are terrific: particularly Anderson, whose performance — when this prologue hits its climax — is heartbreaking.
(Kudos also to the effects team that so convincingly — and spookily — “youthified” Weisz and Harbour.)
The family’s narrow escape comes at a cost; it also reveals Alexei as the former, strength-enhanced Red Guardian, Russia’s answer to Captain America.
We then jump ahead 20 years, as the adult Natasha goes to ground at a safe house in Norway, with amenities arranged by former soldier turned international smuggler turned “fixer” Mason (O-T Fagbenle). He and Natasha have an amiable history; Fagbenle and Johansson share a mildly flirty rapport that introduces this film’s refreshing reliance on snarky banter. This won’t be just sturm und drang (and thank goodness for that).
But Natasha has fled the frying pan, only to wind up in the fire of her own past. Not all details are revealed right away; she recalls — and learns — key events, just as we do.
She’s actually one of a couple dozen lethal “widows” physically and psychologically trained to be resourceful spy assassins, way back in the day, in a project dubbed the “Red Room” and overseen by the insidious Dreykov (Ray Winstone). Natasha, having abandoned her native country to become an Avenger, believes that she killed him and destroyed the Red Room project a few years earlier; recent evidence suggests otherwise.
Indeed, Dreykov’s hold on his widow squad has become even more pernicious: chemical, rather than “merely” psychological. These women can’t turn away, as Natasha did … at least, not without a medical antidote.
No surprise: such an antidote exists.
No surprise: Yelena (now Florence Pugh), another of Dreykov’s widows, has grown up to become just as capable and ferocious as Natasha.
No surprise: Yelena gets un-dosed early on, which allows the two women to operate as collaborative ass-kickers. Which is much more fun than spending most of the film watching them fight each other (and I’m grateful the scripters didn’t go that route).
Not that this reunion proceeds smoothly. “Estranged” is putting it mildly; Yelena has long felt betrayed and abandoned, and both are furious over the way their childhoods — their lives — were shattered. Dreykov’s machinations in his Red Room, once revealed, are genuinely horrifying: child abuse writ very large.
That makes him a bad, bad man: a manipulative villain who works up far more of our revenge empathy, than some routine mutant or extra-terrestrial world conqueror. Winstone plays him sublimely; the utterly ruthless Dreykov is the stuff of nightmares.
Much as I admire the persuasive dedication Johansson has long given to this role, the feisty Pugh — recently seen in Little Women and the TV miniseries adaptation of The Little Drummer Girl — almost blows her off the screen. She’s got a scornful pout to die for, and her saucy Russian accent makes her flippant one-liners — always delivered with a straight face — even funnier.
The best running gag: Yelena’s amused disdain for Natasha’s “landing pose,” which is droll, when we thing back on how Johansson has made that such a signature, ever since the Widow’s debut in 2010’s Iron Man 2.
Harbour, just seen in No Sudden Move, is making the most of the fame he acquired in TV’s Stranger Things. Alexei returns midway through this film, having gone somewhat to seed; Harbour has a lot of fun with this gritty, boastful, quasi-super guy who forever eulogizes his glory days. Harbour adds layers: Although Alexei repeatedly attempts to justify his long-ago “father role” to Natasha and Yelena, his surface bluster doesn’t conceal the guilt in his troubled gaze.
The final primary character is the Taskmaster: Dreykov’s ruthless, masked and armored prime assassin. Aside from its relentless pursuit of any assignment, its strongest asset is “photographic reflexes”: the ability to instantly study and mimic an enemy’s every move.
The early skirmishes, scuffles, melees and battles are tightly paced and choreographed by editors Leigh Folson Boyd and Matthew Schmidt, and stunt coordinator Rob Inch. They’re still preposterous — in that, unlike Thor, Natasha and Yelena are flimsy, flesh-and-blood human beings — but they don’t require too much suspension of disbelief.
Alas, as always is the case with Marvel superhero entries, any semblance of credibility vanishes during the bombastic and overlong climax, which violates every known law of physics, and should have turned our plucky heroines into pulped blood smears about 67 times. Granted, the film has built up considerable good will by this point, but it still becomes tiresome, tedious and redundant.
Matters aren’t helped by Lorne Balfe’s droning and ear-shattering synth score. He seems to have become a go-to guy for such sci-fi, fantasy and superhero projects, which is a shame; every one of his so-called scores is the same monotonous, unmelodic muddle.
Shortland and her writers regain our respect during a droll epilogue, and — as always — be sure to hang around for the very important cut-scene following the end credits.
If we’re not to see Johansson’s Natasha again — which appears to be the case — this film makes a thoroughly entertaining swan song.
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