Black Widow is part of Marvel's superhero series.
The most interesting part of Black Widow is the lawsuit filed by Scarlett Johansson against Disney’s Marvel Entertainment l over her part of the profits. Johansson alleged that her agreement with Disney's Marvel Entertainment 1 guaranteed an exclusive theater release, and her salary was partly based on the box office performance of the film.
Disney released the film simultaneously in theaters and in streaming service.
Scarlett Johansson plays Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, a woman who, as a girl, was abducted and trained to become a special agent. In this part of the series, she tries to make sense of that part of her life. Life before she became an Avenger.
Natasha learns from her "sister" Yellena that the Red Room and Dreykov are still operational, that she deluded herself, when she thought she killed him, even though she sacrificed his daughter, Antonia, to destroy him.
Yellena is younger, her training included the use of a serum that subdued the girls in the assassin training program to make them to obey all commands. A chemical that includes self destruction by suicide.
Yellena's new discovery , also a serum, reverses the chemical brain washing. I wished that it was this easy in real life.
Naturally, the sisters set out to destroy the Red Room and Dreykov for good.
Since we are the villains, the Tasmasker, a killing machine, is a new addition. Sleek design, immense power, and even some surprise.
It is action packed. Any number of fights, many are cat fights, escapes, car chases, bike chases, flights of all sorts.
The editing of those sequences is first rate, the stunt men and women incredible. Add CGI of all sort, visually there is nothing to complain about.
Logistically, there are some odd mistakes. A trained assassin taking refuge in a remote cabin, connected to the world only by a bridge, is unlikely to fall for trap of heating fuel running out in a day. A shortage that would force her to cross that bridge.
But hey, it is a convulsed story with all kinds of twists, unnatural powers and forces, so what is one little mistake?
The one thing that felt truly life real comes when Natasha looks at the endless pictures of girls trained and placed to perform as black widows. She says: there is always more girls.
This is not new, Sylvester Stallone in First Blood (1982) expressed the same sentiment by saying: "I'm expendable", but it is true. There are always more people to be used.
The acting is fine, none of the characters require anything special, this is straight, no nonsense thriller-action movie, and all those stars could act their parts probably in their sleep; they are all good and very experienced.
You must like the genre, if this is your cup of blood, it will not disappoint.
Directed by Cate Shortland. With Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh as Yellena Belova, Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff, David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov, Ray Winstone as Dreykoff, William Hurt as Secretary Ross. Olga Kurylenko is the sole Russian speaker, born in Ukraine of Russian and Ukrainian ancestry, as Antonia Dreykov .
* The law suit was settled.
