Black Widow

Last night I finally had the chance to see the long-awaited movie Black Widow at a Thursday preview and it was both entertaining and surprisingly poignant.  In a flashback scene set in 1995, a young Natasha Romanoff (Ever Anderson) and Yelena Belov (Violet McGraw) are surrogate daughters to Alexei Shastakov (David Harbour), a Russian super-soldier akin to Captain America named Red Guardian, and Melina Vostokoff (Rachel Weisz), a Black Widow, to help maintain their covers as part of a sleeper cell in Ohio.  When the mission ends, both Natasha and Yelena are subjected to psychological reprogramming in the Red Room training facility to become Black Widows themselves.  The action resumes in the immediate aftermath of the events in Captain America: Civil War with Natasha (Scarlett Johansson) on the run from Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt).  Yelena (Florence Pugh) is still a Black Widow subject to chemical mind control by the head of the Red Room, General Dreykov (Ray Winstone).  However, while on a mission, she comes in contact with the antidote that removes the Red Room's control and sends it to Natasha who comes looking for her in Budapest.  Yelena's story brings up unsettling memories of a former mission (we finally find out what happened in Budapest with Clint Barton) so Natasha decides to find and destroy the Red Room with the help of Alexei and Melina who also have ties to Dreykov.  The action is absolutely thrilling, especially in the many hand-to-hand combat sequences, and I was really impressed by Pugh because she definitely holds her own with Johansson who is as kick-ass as usual.  I have always really enjoyed the character of Black Widow but I especially loved her arc in this movie because she is forced to confront the demons from her past and is able to find a bit of redemption.  I also loved the exploration of what it means to be a family and the interactions between Natasha, Yelena, Alexei, and Milena are highly emotional as they process the trauma they have all been through but they are also often quite humorous, particularly a running gag about the superhero landing pose.  My only complaint is that the stakes are not as high as they could have been because we know Natasha's fate and that casts a bit of a pall on the proceedings.  Nevertheless, this is a worthy send off for Scarlett Johansson and the Black Widow character and I would highly recommend seeing it in IMAX.

Note:  This also feels like a beginning for Florence Pugh in the franchise but I am not sure how I feel about the set-up for her character (it goes without saying that you should definitely stay for an end credits scene).