I’m sorry my Black Widow review is so late in arriving. I only saw it last night, and I’m not even sure I can write anything that won’t bore everyone silly. It opened last Friday and everyone has already moved on, and it was so dreadful to sit through…really. This morning Jordan Ruimy called Black Widow “unwatchable.” He’s not wrong.
It has, at least, a fairly obvious feminist metaphor. Black Widows are a worldwide network of ruthless female assassins, trained in a Russian-organized “red room” program run by Ray Winstone‘s “General Dreykov” with their minds totally controlled in some kind of zombie-ish fashion. The film’s basic focus is on a pair of Black Widow sisters — Natasha Romanov (Scarlett Johansson) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) — whose younger selves we first meet in a 1995 flashback prelude. But the key thing is the discovery of an antidote that can potentially free the Widow army from Dreykov’s chemical control and allow them to self-determine.
So that’s the basic MacGuffin — an elusive but sought-after antidote that allows an army of female warriors to throw off the yoke of male oppression. But of course, Black Widow is about a lot more than that central idea. Unfortunately.
I knew I would suffer through this godawful thing. I knew it would pound and narcotize me to death and suffocate what’s left of my soul, and boy, did it ever. It was serious formulaic torture, but I had to watch it, I felt, and in front of a big-ass screen with a suitably loud WHOMP-THROMP-EERURRP sound system. Once again I sat in the handicapped row, and before the 8 pm show began I was already weakened by 20 minutes of trailer pulp…idiot-level action movies designed to make you vomit and scream. And then, finally…
Directed by Cate Shortland and running 134 minutes, Black Widow begins quietly — that flashback sequence in suburban Ohio. A brief acquaintance with Russian undercover agents Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour) and Melina Vostokoff (a digitally de-aged Rachel Weisz) and their “surrogate” daughters Natasha (Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw).
I was immediately intrigued by the 13 year-old Anderson, who has a much more interesting face (indications of emotional complexity, soulful eyes) than Johansson and Pugh combined. I was thinking to myself, “Okay, maybe…”
And then Black Widow loses its mind. The family is suddenly armed and loaded and on the run, being chased by weaponized bad guys (U.S. authorities?). They jump on a private plane…or three of them do while Harbour shoots it out — recklessly, absurdly — with the pursuers on the tarmac. Then he ridiculously leaps into the plane wing as he continues to fire, and of course no one gets hit with a bullet as the plane ascends into the darkness…right away I was muttering “this is so infuriating, so friggin’ stupid.”
Marvel is all formula, all pandering, all the time. Except for Avengers: Endgame, Ant Man and Joe Johnston‘s Captain America and maybe one or two others, Marvel films are almost always a gruesome experience. Aimed at American none-too-brights, Marvel films “charm” and “thrill” like hooded executioners. They oppress and suffocate the soul. Head-pounding aggression. Sardonic attitudes.
Poor Ray Winstone, I was thinking…stuck playing another Mr. Big goon. And what’s happened to poor William Hurt? He looks too thin, barely resembles himself.
My head was spinning, screaming. Can I take another 100 minutes of this shit?
I’m not allowed to say this, but here goes anyway. Pugh and ScarJo deliver that downbeat bitter-sardonic Marvel ‘tude well enough, but they’re both TOO LITTLE to be super-heroes. They’re both 5’3” — only 17 inches taller than Herve Villechaize.
I know that nobody cares about upper body strength and that the basic idea (apart from the above-mentioned metaphor) is that these two (and some other women) are handling almost all the action and gunplay and running around, and that’s fine. But it’s boring, man. Even the crazy car chase in Budapest. You know what got me about the Budapest footage? Budapest itself. I wanted the chase sequence to end so I could savor the architecture. Really.
The hand-to-hand combat scenes between Matt Damon and Joey Ansah (as CIA hitman “Desh Bouksani”) in The Bourne Ultimatum (’07) were believable and terrific. There’s nothing in Black Widow that comes close to matching that kind of realism.
I didn’t give a damn about the timeline. I didn’t give a damn about who lived or died. I knew this was ScarJo’s swan song. I didn’t give a damn about anything. I hated it like nothing I’ve ever hated in my life. I just wanted it to end. The 134 minutes felt like 180, minimum.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I despise the summer mass-market experience. Theatres are no longer “theatres” but gladiator arenas. And come to think of it, I hated the guys sitting behind me….actually, my feelings about them deserves its own post.