“Black Widow” is like the last match a big team has to play in a season after securing the title. It doesn’t really matter if they win or lose. A great opportunity for thanking a veteran who will not be with us in the new season. A perfect opportunity for introducing new faces that we will be depending on in the near future. A suitable opportunity for sending a few political messages and scoring points with particular segments from the fans, and most importantly the best opportunity to give the key players a rest. That of course doesn’t prevent the individuals in the field from having a good game in light of the circumstances, so how exactly was the performance?
David Harbour Makes Every Scene He’s In A Little Better
“Black Widow” Tells the story of what Natasha Romanoff was busy with between the events of “Civil War” and “Infinity War”. After successfully escaping from Thaddeus Ross she heads to Norway, where contact is established between her and Yelena Belova, who was raised with her and trained with her in the Soviet project for preparing Black Widows; The Red Room. Belova needs Romanoff’s help to destroy The Red Room and free all the Black Widows, which requires a confrontation with the leader of the program General Dreykov and his deadly weapon represented in the mysterious assassin; Taskmaster but, more importantly, it will require a confrontation with the past of Romanoff, Belova and the family in which they were raised.
Our team performed well. They made the best product possible from the leftovers of the Marvel stories ingredients. A villain that is more like all the villains that Captain America ever faced. A threatening super soldier that is more or less like The Winter Soldier or Ghost. A substance that gives a leverage to the side that has it like .. any substance that ever appeared in any Marvel film. We also have some twists and turns that are directly borrowed from “Captain America and The Winter Soldier”.
Our story has nothing that we haven’t seen before. It is only injected by diversified action sequences whenever called or uncalled for. Seriously, one of the best fight confrontations of the film didn’t have a single reason to even happen! But to be honest, the action was cool. Real effort was invested in designing them and making sure no two action scenes look the same. Stunt team did a great job with some advanced and mind blowing sequences. Stars of the film did nothing other than look sexy or funny in combat suits, but that’s the Marvel formula anyway. Nicely filmed, nicely edited. The final confrontation maybe took exaggeration a bit too far .. as far “The Fast and the Furious” honestly. This may be the only negative side of the action experience and that’s why it remains one of the best aspects of the film along with, like I said, the players in the field.
Very few of the characters of the film are ones that we’ve seen before and the key character is the one we know we shouldn’t see again. The formula had everything in it though. A hero with a rich story and a long history. A partner in this history with equal richness and a promising future in our universe. A mystery figure with continuous doubt in intentions. The comic relief with humorous and loveable presence, and sufficient complications between everyone.
I believe it will be hard to argue with the fact that the best character of the film is Alexei Shostakov or Red Guardian portrayed by David Harbour. One of those occurrences where you cannot imagine anybody else ever playing the character. Fresh type of comedy that jumps out of nowhere but never feels out of place and although the character is supposed to be a super soldier, his key dramatic input is kindness. In a film that is mostly colourless, David Harbour stands out as an undeniable shade of red.
Florence Pugh is great in the film and great as an addition to the future of the Marvel plans. She brings freshness to the label of Black Widow with some humour and warmth in the character history. As opposed to the relative coldness in which our beloved Black Widow was presented. We have a history with Scarlett Johansson in the character. We’ve seen her transform and grow from a side character that no one knew why she should matter, to a key character that shocked us when it was time for her to leave. I don’t think the Black Widow film was the best goodbye she could’ve had, but at least she had one and she did the best with the opportunity.
The story of Black Widow is not fun, and not good. The villain is poor and lacks charisma. The threat is not strong and not interesting. Our action makes the chapters of the film tolerable, and the formula of our protagonist side evened up the overall watching experience. Cate Shortland, the film director, comes from the literature and artistic side of movie making. So I don’t think she had much to account for in the action and, being in a Marvel film, I don’t trust she had a say in the story as a whole. However, she did make the drama better and did help the emotions feel real. I believe that is sufficient to call her experience a success.