BLACK WIDOW
The Romanoff dynasty
RELEASED 13 SEPTEMBER (Download out now)
2021 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/dvd/ download
Director Cate Shortland
Cast Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz
Black Widow’s longdemanded solo adventure arrives so belatedly it’s actually posthumous. Rewinding to the aftermath of Captain America: Civil War, when Natasha Romanoff was still a warm-bodied concern, it’s a film on a mission to declassify the history of Marvel’s trained assassin turned worldsaver. “I’ve lived a lot of lives,” Natasha tells us, as we see her torn from the blissful green suburbia of
’90s Ohio to the abusive horror of the Red Room, where young girls are weaponised in the name of Mother Russia, to being a fugitive hunted by the US government.
Stylistically the movie embraces the spy genre, in all its incarnations: there’s a hands-on touch of Bourne in a vicious kitchen fight, some Mission: Impossible mask-play and stunt work, even a retro-bond climax with an exploding sky-high lair (cheekily anticipated by a clip from Moonraker itself ).
The tone of the action may lurch, but helmer Cate Shortland’s heart is in the emotional details. For once, the cliché is true; it’s all about family. As kid sister Yelena, Florence Pugh isn’t just there for some gloriously snippy interplay (“You’re a total poser!”). She’s a scalpel to explore Natasha’s conflicted psyche. Stranger Things’ David Harbour amuses as a washed-up ex-soviet superhero, while Rachel Weisz is mother, an earlier generation of Widow whose loyalties are more oblique.
The chemistry of these supporting players gives the film its life and its weight. But it’s an understated Johansson who holds it all together, bringing an interior reality beyond the car-flipping, fireballs and CG physics.
Extras Cate Shortland provides a brief intro (one minute), outlining her vision for a visceral, emotionally-revealing entry in the Marvel canon, one that would reveal “the human under the suit”. Two behind-thescenes featurettes cover fights and relationships (six minutes) and sets and locations (nine minutes), including the making of the Budapest bike chase. Filled with surface-level soundbites and padded with promo clips, these feel, like so many modern extras, like trailers for proper documentaries. Frustrating.
An unremarkable gag reel (four minutes) is bolted on to some more quick-cut puffery, including Johansson looking back on a decade of Widowhood. There are nine deleted scenes, none of which are essential, though you might regret the loss of a poignant coda where Natasha returns to Ohio and exchanges make-believe Widow stings with a neighbourhood girl.
Oh, and an extended fight scene shows David Harbour having the
kicked out of him in a Russian gulag.
Nick Setchfield
Ursa, the prisoner Alexei arm-wrestles, is Ursa Major: in the Marvel comics, a mutant who can turn into a bear.