Black Widow (2021) * *

Directed by:  Cate Shortland

Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Florence Pugh, David Harbour, Rachel Weisz, Ray Winstone, William Hurt

Natasha Romanoff (aka Black Widow) was on the short end in the personality and superpower departments.   She can kick butt with the best of them, but has no legit superpowers to speak of.  Black Widow is part origin story and fills in the blank as to what Natasha was doing to occupy her time in between Captain America: Civil War and Avengers: Infinity War, in case you were wondering.  

Scarlett Johansson tries to infuse Natasha with a heart and some emotional depth, as she has in her previous Avengers incarnations, but there just isn't much to care about.   We already know what the fate which awaits her in Avengers: Endgame, so whatever victories she achieves in Black Widow will be hollow.   Her backstory begins in 1995 Ohio, when Natasha and her seemingly happy family are uprooted hastily and escape to Cuba.   Natasha's parents (Weisz and Harbour) are really Russian moles and not even her real parents.   Her sister Yelena (Pugh) isn't her sister either.   The family was thrown together by Dreykov (Winstone), a curmudgeonly villain who trains more Russian undercover agents to infiltrate the Western world.   Natasha later kills (or so she thinks) Dreykov and destroys his laboratory known as the Red Room, but we learn that years later Dreykov is still kicking and still perfecting his plan to establish mind control over countless women to ensure their obedience to him.   Yelena comes into possession of the antidote which will free Dreykov's assassins from being controlled.  

Natasha's makeshift family reunites to thwart Dreykov.   Natasha and Yelena are still bitter that they were lied to as children and forced to live as orphans raised in violence.   The strange "family" dynamic is the only aspect of Black Widow which we haven't seen before in other Marvel productions.   The rest checks the boxes any Marvel moviegoer will expect:   Things blown up, check.  Overly acrobatic fistfights, check.  Bodies flying around, check.   Black Widow does this all with a lot less humor and energy than we usually see in similar movies.  

Pugh, Harbour, and Weisz add elements which at least attempt to elevate Black Widow from an unnecessary origins story to a movie with a soul.   But even their performances, which stand out, can only do so much.  Knowing how nature abhors a vacuum, or in the case of movie franchises, any period of time in which a character's whereabouts aren't explained, we will expect to see another Black Widow movie which will show us what Natasha was up to in between 1995 and the first Iron Man movie.