Black Widow (2021)

A year without Marvel movies is hard to fathom, but that’s what 2020 gave us. Two years is even more impossible to imagine, and yet Black Widow is, finally, the first foray into Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Spider-Man: Far From Home was, improbably, the coda to Phase Three). Positioned at this odd juncture in moviegoing history, and slotted into the MCU timeline of five years ago, Black Widow is something of an odd duck, and it is for my money the first MCU disappointment in a long while.

Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow finds Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) on the run when a coded message from her erstwhile sister Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) summons her to Budapest. The two Black Widow spies agree to take down the Red Room training program that created them, but they’ll need the help of their two former foster parents (David Harbour and Rachel Weisz) to defeat the spymaster (a ludicrously un-Russian Ray Winstone) who molded them.

 

After thirteen years of Marvel movies, television shows, and short films, the MCU has become almost entirely unwieldy, all but inaccessible to newcomers. I thought about this as I watched Black Widow, precariously positioned in a continuity that expects you to know when and why William Hurt is wandering around the periphery of the plot as Secretary Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. For the true believers (or, as they’ve also been dubbed, “Marvel Zombies”) who haven’t missed a moment, it’s a frisson of continuity glee to see how Black Widow slots into the chronology, but it’s truly groan-worthy when the film reveals – surprise! – the secret origin of the vest Natasha was wearing in Infinity War. Not since Solo felt the need to explain Han Solo’s surname has a prequel bent so far over backwards to explain something no one asked.

 

Hurt aside, there aren’t many opportunities for the film to include any of the major MCU cameos we might expect, and this is actually for the better. A Black Widow movie, especially if it is indeed Johansson’s swan song in the franchise, ought to expand the title character’s world beyond what we already know about her. And on this count, the film both succeeds and fails. We do get a family of sorts for the orphan Natasha, who we learn spent formative years deep undercover in Ohio with a phony family. Then again, where were they this whole time, and where have they been since? (The easiest answer – that they were all “blipped” off-screen – is somewhat dramatically inert.) Rachel Weisz is intriguing but entirely humorless as Melina Vostokoff; unfortunately, she’s given very little in the film to do because so much oxygen is taken up by David Harbour’s excessively hammy performance as Alexei Shostakov, the Red Guardian. I didn’t read many reviews of the film during its hybrid theatrical/streaming release, but it seemed audiences were mostly enamored of Harbour, though I found his acting broad, cloying, and a little desperate.

 

With Johansson sleepwalking through the film, just about the only performance that caught my attention was Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova, ostensibly the “new” Black Widow. Pugh is fun, believable, and layered in a way most Marvel fan-favorites are (think The Falcon or Wanda Maximoff, even before they got their own shows). It’s a delight to hear that Marvel has further plans for Pugh, including a stint on the upcoming Hawkeye show, because Yelena could ably fill the void left by Natasha or create her own space entirely in the MCU (however that pesky lawsuit shakes itself out). When Pugh’s on screen, the film really seems to work, however dodgy all the so-called Russian accents might be.

 

I like Marvel movies more than most, and it’s not that Black Widow is wildly incompetent, a theatrical mess like whatever Batman & Robin was trying to be – or, more recently, the tonal hostage situation that was The Suicide Squad. Black Widow has an internal logic, a clear narrative, and a different set of stakes that the Marvel movies don’t always see. It works; it’s fine. But it was the first Marvel movie in years – perhaps ever – where I almost fell asleep. Granted, it was late, and all the lights were out, and I was alone; yet while the movie never lost me, nor did it ever really have me. The plot is predictable and without nuance, a kind of vanilla apology for the second-stringer position formerly occupied by Natasha Romanoff.

 

Then again, Natasha has been so much better in other, better films. She managed to make perfect sense among demigods and super-soldiers in The Avengers, and she was emotionally compelling in Endgame. And she was an absolute vision in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, still the best Marvel movie, hands-down, in part because it left her past as shadowy and oblique. Here, the truth about her childhood ends up making her a supporting character in her own film. In fact, maybe that’s the key. Black Widow doesn’t grow over the course of the film, having already reckoned with her past in other Marvel entries. All we get is a little padding around the edges, which may or may not come to bear on future projects.

 

At the end of the day, Black Widow is one of the lesser Marvel movies, about on par with Thor: The Dark World but never quite as engaging as, say, an Ant-Man or two. The Dark World was fine enough, but it’s never been something I sought out to rewatch. Throughout Black Widow, I found myself wishing I were instead watching The Winter Soldier. Natasha had an arc there, a purpose, and she was darned fun to watch too. Black Widow feels a bit like homework, obligatory for any true believer who’s come this far. Maybe brew a pot of coffee before you dive into this assignment.

 

Black Widow is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence/action, some language, and thematic material.” Directed by Cate Shortland. Written by Eric Pearson, Jac Schaeffer, and Ned Benson. Based on the Marvel Comics. Starring Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, O-T Fagbenle, Olga Kurylenko, William Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Rachel Weisz.

Noah (2014)

Abandon all hope, ye who anticipate a Biblically accurate adaptation of the flood narrative.  This here’s Aronofsky territory.  The same uber-metaphorical lens through which Black Swan regards Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” gets applied here to Genesis, resulting in a film that is often uncannily strange but never less than engaging.

Russell Crowe stars as the Scriptural patriarch who gathers his family and two-of-every-kind in a colossal ark after a vision from The Creator informs him that the world is about to perish in a flood.  As he gathers his family (wife Jennifer Connelly, sons including Logan Lerman, and daughter-in-law Emma Watson), Noah incurs the wrath of local warlord Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), who refuses to believe that God has not spoken to him too.  Postscript – check out Anthony Hopkins as a berry-gathering Methuselah, doing that wise old man act he’s perfected by now.

Let’s set aside the religious debate right off the bat.  The film doesn’t purport Biblical accuracy; in fact, director Darren Aronofsky disavows any such intention.  Consequently, I think Noah ought to be measured by the same standards as any other film adaptation of a major mythic narrative, in the vein of superhero or Hercules movies.  And there’s nothing in Noah that constitutes an unequivocal betrayal of the source material, nothing incompatible with the core of the original story.

As an interpretive adaptation, then, Noah is mostly successful, though it borders every so often on the bizarre.  The film is fortunately anchored by a very compelling and very human performance from Crowe, who imbues Noah with a deeper humanity than most interpretations. Rather than present Noah as a stoic “true believer,” Crowe gives him his moments of doubt, his misinterpretations of the message, and his post-flood uncertainty.  (Plus, after this and Man of Steel, Crowe has the market cornered on “dads who put their sons in arks.”)

Aronofsky does some visually clever stuff when he introduces Noah’s visions from The Creator as slideshow dream sequences, working in a nifty sample of the overlap between creationism and evolution.  But then the film gets really weird, and by weird I mean “rock people help build the ark.”  There’s a bit of murky theology in these rock people being fallen angels who help mankind, and their bids for forgiveness play up a side of Old Testament God that isn’t seen too often.  In a movie that otherwise immerses you in a specific time period in antiquity, though, living rocks strain credulity.

The other major subplot Aronofsky introduces is the presence of a tribal chief who goes to war for a spot on the ark.  It’s a plausible addition that Noah’s neighbors might have been a bit jealous, and Winstone is wholly engaging as Noah’s foil.  Aronofsky uses these villains, though, to posit an underlying vegans-versus-carnivores message that ultimately confounds more than it proselytizes.  (Some are reading it as anti-industrialist, though that may be a bridge too far.)  It’s fine for establishing a contrast between Noah and the sinners, but it raises major ethical questions:  Noah kills three hunters to avenge their killing of an animal for food, but he turns a blind eye to the rape and pillage of actual humans next door.  I see what Aronofsky is doing, adding an earthy and spiritual element to Noah’s communion with The Creator, but it’s more distracting than it should be precisely because the logic doesn’t hold up.

All told, though, Noah ends up an engaging film, a successful spectacle – which is, at the end of the day, all I ask of a movie.  It’s far from patently offensive, and the parts in the film that work do work very well.  Aside from a few silly bits, Noah is big-budget pageantry at its most watchable, put forward by a powerful lead performance and directed by a man with an unmistakable (if punctuated by logical error) directorial vision.

Noah is rated PG-13 for “violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content.”  Aside from the whole exterminating flood, there are a few scenes of bloody combat, other scenes of animals being killed in gory fashion, and a bit of bare-shouldered friskiness from the cast’s younger group.

Next week, something we haven’t done in a very long while – two reviews on the same day. Hint:  what’s the big release this Friday?  And when is the Double-Oh-Seventh of this month?  Put another way, when is an American icon like a British agent?  When they’re both reviewed here, that is!  See you next week!