Black Widow Review
Expensive mediocrity.
Credit: Disney
Black Widow mixes great action with a tedious script, predictable plot and overly long runtime. The results are mixed.
If I had to describe Black Widow’s fight scenes using one word only, I’d say “ragdoll.” Bodies are tossed into walls, out of vehicles, off bridges, through windows, into the air and onto the ground like ragdolls.
The action is fast-paced and furious, and while the fights in Black Widow are not particularly bloody—it’s the MCU, after all—they’re often surprisingly brutal.
Since there are many fights and a great deal of action, it’s an entertaining enough movie for a dose of superhero fun and escapism.
There’s plenty to like about Black Widow. It can be funny at times—if you’re not too burnt out on the MCU’s trademark brand of humor. It’s exciting and violent with lots of fun locations that fly by almost too fast to notice.
But there’s plenty to dislike as well.
The characters all feel a little flat and inconsequential, but when they’re bickering and arguing or smashing each others’ faces in, you can ignore how shallow the whole thing is—part The Americans, part Jason Bourne, with just enough Avengers thrown in to remind us that this is indeed a standalone MCU film, for better or worse.
Black Widow hews toward a darker, grittier style than much of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, though by the end we find ourselves in much more familiar territory. Things go boom. A giant, hovering base explodes and crashes out of the sky—Marvel’s version of the Death Star.
The 20 Minute Rule
There’ s a formula to most Marvel movies and Black Widow only flirts briefly with abandoning it before returning wholesale. By about the halfway point, or maybe sooner, you should be able to chart out exactly what’s going to happen in the second half.
In fact, after the opening act, I found myself drifting. Getting antsy.
The action scenes are fun but often too predictable, and there so many that even the better, more elaborate set-pieces (like a Russian prison about to be crushed under a massive avalanche) start to feel tired.
Meanwhile, the personal drama isn’t compelling or surprising enough to occupy as much screen time as it does, and I found myself coming back to my current running theory that most movies these days—and especially most superhero movies—are about 20 minutes too long. As a guiding principle this could be applied to a startling number of genre films. Cutting 20 to 30 minutes would almost always help, making for more palatable, less tedious, cinematic experiences.
I said the same thing about Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead. Cut 20 minutes (or so) and you have a better, better-paced picture. Black Widow runs 2 hours and 14 minutes. This is at least 20 minutes too long, but probably more like 30. If I went back through the movie again, I guarantee I could point out every single scene that could be cut or shortened. That avalanche scene I mentioned up above? It would have been a lot better if we hadn’t already been so inundated with so much action.
What happened to 1 hour and 45 minute-long movies?
Actually, they’re still out there. A Quiet Place 2 is just 1 hour and 37 minutes and it definitely doesn’t need to be any longer than that. Its economical and tells a complete story with a skillful mix of action and drama, and a satisfying resolution that arrives just in time. John Wick sits well under the 2 hour mark at 1 hour and 42 minutes, and not a minute of it is wasted.
Black Widow dawdles even when everything is exploding. It drags its feet in every character-driven scene that doesn’t involve guns blazing or a fist fight. And the ending is painfully slow. The movie is too long and the pacing suffers for it especially as we get into the latter half.
Bad Timing
There are other issues as well, chief among them something I think we can all agree on regardless of our opinion about the film as a whole: Black Widow’s placement on the MCU timeline and its actual release date simply don’t make sense. The movie takes place after Captain America: Civil War and before Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. In the latter of those films, Black Widow is killed—and she isn’t “snapped” back to life in the un-Spannening. She’s dead and gone.
Logistics and other business issues conspired to push this film back many years after it ought to have been released, and watching it just feels weird. We know she dies, but unlike knowing that Vision is dead in WandaVision we don’t have any big mysteries to unravel, no big questions to ask, since the movie simply takes place before the other films.
Black Widow is a fine MCU film—perfectly average in every way—and I’m not sure that’s enough to justify its existence. If it were truly great, I could shrug off timeline issues, but it’s not. It’s decidedly OK. Scarlett Johansson is still great in the role. I very much enjoyed David Harbour as Soviet superhero, Red Guardian, as some much-needed comic relief. The rest of the cast, including Florence Pugh as Yelena and Rachel Weisz as Melina, does a fine job. It was kind of fun to see O-T Fagbenle here with a British accent, since I’m so used to him as Luke from The Handmaid’s Tale.
(Young Natasha is played by Ever Anderson who looked so familiar I had to google her. Turns out she’s the daughter of Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich, which explains things).
So a fine cast, to be sure. It’s just that there really isn’t much to work with, especially after the opening moments. I wanted more mystery or a clever heist or two, or anything that could elevate this picture from straight action to something more Bond-ian. But Bond movies are sexy and MCU movies are mostly devoid of sex. Bond movies have a sharp edge, a tuxedo to hide that silenced pistol beneath, a martini in hand. Black Widow is all fists and grenades.
The movie tries too hard to say too many things and ends up saying nothing much at all except that—in predictable MCU fashion—the good guys will win and the bad guys will lose. Neither heroes nor villains manage to be particularly interesting along the way. On both sides we deal with remarkably shallow characterization, even for a superhero film.
Verdict
Would I pay $30 to see Black Widow on Disney Plus?
Frankly, no. It’s something you should watch if you enjoy the character (I do) and some good fight scenes (there are many) but it doesn’t really add any new layers to the MCU and feels oddly out of place given where that franchise is now. It’s fine, but it’s not $30 fine.
If you’re going to see it, go to the movie theaters so you can experience all the spectacle as it’s intended: Loud, boisterous and flashy. Just be prepared to get a little bored—not Aquaman levels of bored, but bored nonetheless. There are more than a couple very good jump scares that will resonate in the movie theater more than at home also.
All told, I give Black Widow a “middling” score. It’s a fine, entertaining movie about Natasha Romanoff and her fake family and we’re introduced to some cool characters like Taskmaster (whose fight scenes are among the most entertaining in the film, though whose secret identity is sure to be divisive) but it drags too much and doesn’t really expand the universe in cool, creative ways. It’s basically a Tom Cruise spy thriller but with Black Widow and super powers and—well, not really any heists. And maybe that’s all it needs to be. Nothing special, nothing really bold or daring or awful and glaring. It’s the MCU in a nutshell, truth be told, playing it safe while pretending not to.
If you want to watch something about Soviet spies that’s actually great, check out The Americans—a ridiculously underrated show that, while not perfect, tackles family, political intrigue and concepts of loyalty with intelligence and intensity you simply won’t find anywhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Black Widow comes to Disney+ and theaters on July 9th.
Director: Cate Shortland
Writers: Jac Schaeffer, Ned Benson, Eric Pearson
Scattered Thoughts:
Perhaps the most amusing thing about Harbour’s character will be for Stranger Things fans who realize that this must be where Hopper’s been all this time, cosplaying as some Soviet superhero in Mother Russia.
I feel like they did a terrible job at establishing the villain or explaining the organization he headed up, and why it only recruited female agents. The story sort of drunkenly shambles its way from one plot point to the next and while it’s not confusing it also fails to really make sense. Character motivations are barely explored. I may go into more depth on this once the film is out and I can talk spoilers.
Captain Marvel is widely derided as a terrible standalone MCU film, and I agree that Captain Marvel herself is pretty bad, wildly overpowered and just not a very great character. But at least that movie had some surprising twists and revelations. Black Widow plays it straight, which would work if it had more going on and was less predictable.
Finally, I made a video—and wrote a separate post at my Substack—about the film’s politics. I’ve seen it praised as a “feminist” film and I’m sure some people will hate it for that reason, but personally I think it’s much ado about nothing. This is an action movie with female leads—not some sort of anti-male movie that dogs on men. Give it a watch:
Its already hard to go watch a new marvel movie. I'm getting so burnt. I feel like in just watching the same thing over and over anymore. I keep telling people that I think I'm done... Endgame was the place to stop for me. Perfect name.