BLACK WIDOW (2021)


BLACK WIDOW (2021)

Tagline: None

(Action, Adventure, Sci-fi) [PG-13]

It feels like this movie should have been given a tagline, but perhaps after some time, they were just like…well screw it. This movie is never coming out…we don’t need one. 

I've lived a lot of lives... But I'm done running from my past.

This movie explores Black Widow’s early life and her whereabouts between the MCU movie CIVIL WAR and INFINITY WAR. Black Widow discovers at an early age she’s being trained to be an assassin and her parents are in on it. Both served a sinister villain named Dreykov who had designs on controlling the entire world with a chemical agent that takes over its victim's brains. Black Widow thought she took him down in the past but is this shadowy figure still alive?

First off let me say, I really didn’t like WINTER SOLDIER, but if you did, this damn thing is going to be a lot more for you than it was for me. There is just a ton of political overtones in this regarding the MCU world (not the real world) and it’s probably closest to WINTER SOLDIER in that sense. Where this thing crushes that movie is in its execution. The storytelling is superb and the characters are wildly enjoyable even with their crazy murderous backgrounds. Partly because we know they all want out and to a point, they were all forced into the lives they led. 

We get a standout performance from Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova. She’s fantastic in this and her quips kind of ribbing Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow played by Scarlett Johansson) give these two some great onscreen chemistry. I had never heard of Pugh before this movie, but we are likely to see her a lot now. She is in the upcoming HAWKEYE Disney + series opposite Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld. I will say I wasn’t crazy about the casting of David Harbour as Alexei in this. I guess he does okay, but I have come to the determination that I really haven’t liked David Harbour in anything as much as I did him playing Jim Hopper in STRANGER THINGS season 1. I am also not a fan of Rachel Weisz so neither of these characters in the movie were positives in the acting and casting department. Scarlett Johansson herself displayed enormous range and was awesome as usual. 

For fans of the comic, you probably noticed Taskmasker is in this movie and I am going to say right now, stop crying about the origin story and all of that crap. Be an adult, enjoy the movie and go in realizing this isn’t the comics. These are the movies, they are fantastic and they are changing things up a bit. So pull your head out of your Captain Crunch, put two of the same kinds of socks on and just deal with it. 

This is the 24th MCU film, but chronologically it’s set right after CIVIL WAR as I mentioned earlier.  There is enough nonstop action, great dialog, intriguing story, and plot twists to keep this movie intensely fun and just overall awesome. In fact, saying the action sequences are phenomenal is an understatement. For me, this is a 7 out of 7, but I should say it is not the best movie I have seen in 2021.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF MARVEL STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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