BLACK WIDOW : Wednesday 28th July 2021.

I finally got around to watching the M Rated 'BLACK WIDOW' this week - the long awaited superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. This is the 24th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the first film in Phase Four of the MCU. Its release was delayed three times from an original May 2020 date due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. 'Black Widow' saw its World Premier screenings on 29th June this year at various red carpet fan events in London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and New York City and was released in Australia and the US on 8th and 9th July respectively, having garnered generally favourable Critical acclaim off the back of a US$200M production budget. This film is Directed by the Australian multiple award winning and nominated writer and film maker Cate Shortland whose three prior feature film credits are 'Somersault' in 2004 with Abbie Cornish and Sam Worthington, 'Lore' in 2012 with Saskia Rosendahl and 'Berlin Syndrome' in 2017 with Teresa Palmer. The film has so far grossed US$320M and is also available to stream on Disney+ with Premier Access.

The film opens up in 1995 in Ohio where two young sisters, Natasha (Ever Anderson) and Yelena (Violet McGraw) are playing in their back yard. Their mother Melina (Rachel Weisz) calls them in for dinner. Their father Alexei (David Harbour) joins them saying to his daughters that the adventure he had always promised them is happening tonight and that they need to leave immediately. They bundle a handful of their belongings into the family car and drive off into the night. They turn down a dirt road and into a field, where under a concealed canopy is a light aeroplane. The two girls jump in, as does Melina, leaving Alexei to fend off a convoy of advancing patrol cars all guns blazing. Melina sustains a gun shot wound leaving Natasha to take the controls. With Alexei hanging onto the wing shooting at the patrol cars Natasha guides the small aircraft into flight leaving the carnage below. They land in Cuba and are greeted by General Dreykov (Ray Winstone) who has Natasha Romanoff and Yelena Belova drugged and carted off for training and indoctrination to the Red Room. It turns out that Alexei Shostakov and Melina Vostokoff are Russian undercover agents who posed as a model family in Ohio with two surrogate daughters for three years before making off with S.H.I.E.L.D intel which they passed onto Dreykov (a nod to James Bond here), who also runs the Black Widow programme. Dreykov has Alexei imprisoned for life, while Melina becomes a top tier scientist within the Red Room.

We then fast forward twenty-one years and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) is on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords after she had defected to S.H.I.E.L.D and following the bombing of Dreykov's office in Budapest seemingly killing him and his young daughter Antonia. The US Secretary of State Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt) is hot on her heels but she successfully evades him and escapes to a safe house located in remote Norway that has been provided to her by a close friend and former S.H.I.E.L.D ally Rick Mason (O-T Fagbenie). In the meantime in Morocco, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) kills a Black Widow but comes in contact with a synthetic red gas that neutralises the Red Room's chemical mind-control agent. Belova sends the small case of antidote vials to Romanoff, hoping she will send the Avengers to free the other Widows. Romanoff unknowingly drives off with the vials to get fuel for her generator when her car is bombed and she is attacked by Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) who is after the case of vials and not her. 

Romanoff manages to escape Taskmaster by jumping off a bridge into a river and when she surfaces with the clutch of vials she notes from a childhood photograph contained therein that they were sent by Belova. The pair reunite in Budapest and after some intense close quarter hand to hand combat they call a truce (a nod to Jason Bourne here) and Romanoff learns from Belova that Dreykov is still alive and the Red Room is still very much active. They are then set upon by a group of Black Widows and Taskmaster from which they successfully escape and then meet up with Rick Mason again who supplies them with a beat up old Russian helicopter. 

Flying their helicopter into what looks like a Siberian prison camp located at the base of a snow covered mountain range Romanoff and Belova break Shostakov out of prison, in a high stakes extraction that ultimately sees the prison complex flattened in a cascading avalanche of snow and ice. They expect him to tell them the whereabouts of Dreykov and he tells them to speak with Vostokoff, who now lives on a farm outside Saint Petersburg raising pigs. There she developed the chemical mind control process used on the Widows, that she perfected on her now very obedient pigs. 

There, Belova reveals that while they were not a real family, she believed they were so, given that she was only six years of age when the family returned to Russia. Afterward, Vostokoff admits to Romanoff that she sent their location to Dreykov and within thirty minutes or so his agents arrive and take them to the Red Room, a floating facility located above the cloud line, and therefore above radar detection capabilities.

Vostokoff and Romanoff use face mask technology to swap places before being captured (a nod to 'Mission : Impossible' here),  so giving Vostokoff the chance to free Shostakov and Belova from their captivity. Meanwhile, Romanoff confronts Dreykov, who sees through her disguise. Dreykov reveals to Romanoff that Taskmaster is in fact his daughter Antonia, who suffered damage severe enough through the bomb explosion when she was just a child that Dreykov had to implant a chip in to the back of her neck. This turned her into the perfect compliant soldier, capable of mimicking the actions of anyone she sees. Romanoff attempts to kill Dreykov but fails to harm him due to a pheromone lock activated through her sense of smell. Dreykov reveals that he is in control of an army of Widows worldwide which he operates via his desk console. 

Romanoff intentionally slams her forehead down on his desk and breaks her nose, severing a nerve in her nasal passage to negate the pheromone lock, and then attacks Dreykov. Shostakov now suited up as the Red Guardian battles Taskmaster, while Vostokoff takes out one of the facility's engines setting in motion the eventual destruction of the entire complex. Belova goes off in search of the other Widows, who now have to guard Dreykov. Together, Shostakov and Vostokoff capture Taskmaster in a cell. The Widows arrive in Dreykov's office and he orders them to kill Romanoff and to make it long and painful. Just as Romanoff is about to be overcome, Belova arrives and detonates numerous vials of the mind control antidote over the Widow's so freeing them from their life of servitude. 

Romanoff gets into Dreykov's control desk and uploads the locations of the other Widows worldwide as the facility begins to explode and begins its free fall back to the ground below. Romanoff retrieves the two surviving vials of the antidote and frees Taskmaster from the locked cell. Vostokoff and Shostakov escape via a plane while Belova takes out Dreykov's aircraft, killing him and his Red Room soldiers, but Belova is blown clear in the explosion and begins plummeting towards the ground. In freefall, Romanoff gives Belova a parachute before battling Taskmaster. After landing, Romanoff uses one antidote vial on Taskmaster, freeing her from servitude. The freed Widows arrive as Belova, Vostokoff, and Shostakov reluctantly say goodbye to Romanoff, as Ross and a convoy of patrol cars arrive to apprehend her. She hands Belova the last vial of antidote and the portable drive, telling her to locate and free the other, still mind-controlled, Widows. They leave with Antonia, as Romanoff waits for the convoy to pull up.

Two weeks later, a now blonde Romanoff reunites with Mason, who has procured her a Quinjet. She leaves, saying that she came into this with no family, and now she has two intending to make amends and free the imprisoned Avengers. Stay tuned for the end credits sequence too. 

'Black Widow' is a fitting send off and a great big last hurrah for Natasha Romanoff in her own right. Cate Shortland here Directs her first superhero film with aplomb and proves that's she more than capable of helming big budget action spectacles on a US$200M grand scale. This is essentially a espionage story wrapped up in a tale of a dysfunctional family battling it out against a supervillain intent on world domination very much grounded on our humble blue planet rather than the standard MCU offerings of late centreing around intergalactic Gods, faraway planetary systems and those with superhuman powers. Johansson and Pugh are perfectly cast as the surrogate siblings with Pugh especially demonstrating her ability to carry the Black Widow universe in further instalments whichever direction that may go in, and Harbour provides much needed moments of levity amongst the more serious and emotional scenes. A well made stand alone entry into the MCU that delivers on the action, the emotion and the overall story arc. 

'Black Widow' warrants four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-