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User Reviews for: Black Widow

PorterUk
5/10  3 years ago
I looked forward to this not because I've been blown away by the recent Marvel films - by the time Endgame arrived, I was past humouring the franchise if I'm honest - but because Scarlett Johansson deserved a standalone film before her time was up.

The worst Marvel film so far for me was Captain Marvel. Just tedious, inconsequential, Marvel-by-the-numbers. This is now 2nd on their list of piss poor films.

The opening 20 minutes were really good. Setting a scene that could have rivalled Winter Soldier - for me, the best of the franchise so far. But once the sisterly reunion was over, it went downhill fast. I think it was the cumulative effect of so many ropey accents. Even cockney geezer Ray Winstone shouldn't be given a role if he refuses to do voice lessons... Quite unforgivable.

I liked Olga Kurylenko, as always. I disliked that her stunt double was clearly a man for the first 2/3 of the film. How is that meant to be ratified by the viewer?

I thought the constant humour was an effort to be Thor Ragnorok-like because, you know, "all Australians are funny"... but that didn't work. And jokes about involuntary hysterectomies don't fall right 99 times out of 100, I'm guessing.

The plot was staid. The action generic. The script fine, I suppose, had it not been for those dreadful accents throughout. And the confinement of the time line needing to fit in with the rest of the franchise meant it was always going to end at a point we all knew it needed to. So the ending really was a damp squib.


5/10

PS. One thing that irked me a little was the unnecessary complaint by SJ during press for the film about feeling sexualised (though I don't recall where in the myriad plots) . Clearly the director and her had an agreement to do tracking shots of her arse several times during this film. If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what is. For a film this average, I won't be holding a grudge though as I won't remember a single thing about this movie tomorrow.
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patrickjkellyii
5/10  3 years ago
The things they did to Taskmaster are unforgivable.

I actually enjoyed the first 2/3rds of the movie. There is a lot of unexpected humor. Florence Pugh and David Harbour really knock it out of the park, but it fails to bring it together in the end. The result is a bunch of scenes that are intended to be emotional, but ultimately play out as forced and borderline cringeworthy.

Black Widow is not a Torretto. Turning this super spy into an emotional vulnerable individual searching for family plays out as disconnected as you'd expect. Even worse is the lack of a present villain for the first half 2/3rds of the movie makes their confrontation feel less poignant despite the supposed deep ties.

This could have been solved somewhat through a Taskmaster that actually talked, but instead they decided to do what Wolverine: Origins did to Deadpool and take one of the more talkative characters and turn them into a soulless robot that only follows orders. I mean that almost literally.

As a result, the shifts of allies and the end confrontation just ends up falling flat and irrational. There is a lot of good substance here that rewrites could have saved, but the result we're left with here just feels ill conceived and weirdly placed, like a Black Widow movie getting made in the first place after the main character has already been killed in the future.
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mel_n
/10  3 years ago
Honestly, if Black Widow opened Marvel’s Phase 4, I would have been even more impressed. However, after seeing the deep dives into characters that had been on the sidelines for years, this movie felt very surface level of the complexity of Natasha Romanoff. She was taken as a child to learn how to be an assassin, she had to sacrifice her morals to leave her past behind, she basically remained an assassin for a different organization that turned out to be run by similarly bad people as those she left, and she is now on the run from the government that once hailed her a hero because she didn’t fall in line. Oh, and she is reconnecting with her past fake family that gave her and Yelena back to the Red Room as soon as the mission was over. The trauma this character endured would’ve been better explored as a mini series, rather than a movie that’s trying to simultaneously remind us of where Natasha was five years ago and also trying not to acknowledge that Natasha has no risk posed to her in this movie because we know she lives on past these events. However, very excited to see where Yelena goes in the future.
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Isi Pahum
/10  3 years ago
Subpar Bond that believes it has emotional stakes isn't exactly a very winning formula. Far too much bad MCU banter to go with something that wants to be grounded and quite frankly none of the actors are quite adapt at those sitcomy whedonisms that these movies made mainstream (Pugh in particular is terrible at those bits). Some of the mid section action is better than average as far as those movies goes but anything with Taskmasker is very bad and the big end is terrible. Winstone villain made me miss when people like Lonsdale and Lee made lousy Moore Bond plots half watchable. The major limitation is that far too much of the emotional beats depend on what characters talk about their time together when they were a pretend family and altough Johansson and Pugh have good chemistry and Weisz and Harbour do as good job as possible under the circunstances of selling their regrets, there just isn't enough downtime between plot needs to anything of it truly land. I can get what Shortland was hoping to import into one of those but little actually works even with the benefit of a far more standalone movie than most of them. Also, strange how after a decade of postponing giving Johansson her movie, they did one in which she so often feels like a witness/connective MCU tissue for the main supporting characters family drama that they had to give her an extra subplot with her guilty over "killing" Winstone's daughter so it can feel like she has more material to work with. She is both the lead and the most extraneous part of her own movie
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Mahnoor Khan
/10  3 years ago
The first half of black widow was very strong and emotional. Florence Pugh was stellar in this movie. She was brilliant in action sequences and I like the fun elements in her character. Yelena and Natasha's chemistry was too good. David Harbour also performed very well.

The action sequences were good but CGI was too weak in the 3d act. Also, I didn't like the changes in Natasha's character. She has no superpowers like other avengers. Her strong brain and mind combine to make her a lethal weapon but they showed her over powerful in this movie.

The inner wounds of Natasha were beautifully delivered in this movie. I liked the movie but because of Florence only.
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