Black Widows Everywhere

I haven't paid much attention - is Black Widow (2021) one of the hated or beloved Marvel movies? We kind of liked it.

It starts with two kids playing in a nice suburb in Ohio, 1995. The older, 10-12 years old?, seems a bit uneasy, but the younger, 5-6?, is just goofy. Their mother calls them in to supper, and their dad comes home. He announces that they are going on a big adventure. They grab a go-bag and some guns, but mom won't let them take a photo album. 

They wind up in a car chase/running gun battle with the police. They get to the airport, but mom is shot. Dad seems to be able to hold onto the wing of the small plane they fly out in. When they land in Cuba, it becomes clear - they are Russian spies, undercover. The kids are just camouflage. I never watched The Americans, but I bet it's a source.

Anyway, cut to "Present Day", in this case, during the Avengers Civil War. The younger girl has grown up to be Florence Pugh. In Budapest, she is trying to kill another woman, who turns out to be a rogue widow. Just before she kills her, she gets sprayed with a little vial of gas that turns off her programming. Now she's free and she's sorry for what she has done.

Meanwhile, the older girl is now Scarlett Johansson, hiding out from the Sokovia Accords. She gets a package from Pugh, which turns out to be the vials of deprogramming gas. She gets attacked by this super-soldier in a General Grievous mask. This is Taskmaster, who can copy anyone's fighting style, with a few extra tricks. Nonetheless, Johansson gets away, and with the vials, which were the target all along.

She heads to Budapest to find out what's up. After a cute little sister fight, they work out the plot of the movie. Sinister figure Dreykov has found a way to program perfect assassins, and has done this to Pugh, Johansson, and all the other widows. The gas can deprogram them - although Johansson doesn't need it for some reason? Anyway, they have to get to the place this programming is done, the Red Room. And to do that, they need their old fake American dad.

That's David Harbour, who seems to have perfected the Bad Dad in Stranger Things. He used to be the Red Guardian, the Soviet answer to Capt. America, but after glasnost, he's just a strong, fat, bearded guy in prison. So the girls break him out. But he can't really help. They'll need fake mom.

She is Rachel Weisz, a behavioral biologist living on a farm. She has training a pig not to breathe on command - until it dies, although she lets up at the last moment. They ask for her help, and instead she tells them that she has called the Red Room on them. 

So they wind up in the Red Room, which turns out to be a heli-carrier, like SHIELD's. Dreykov is Ray Winstone, a kind of fat old Russian version of a Hollywood macher. And he still has programming hooks into Johansson.

There's some confusing stuff here lifted from Face/Off, and it all ends with a lot of explosions and more than one freefall fight scene. We also find out the Taskmaster is Olga Kurylenko, horribly scarred as a girl by Johansson. Also, in need of deprogramming gas.

Like most Marvel movies, this seems radically overstuffed and full of ridiculous and wonderful action scenes. But it also has a real human heart, the story of the sisters and their make-believe parents forming some kind of crazy family. Harbour's role is played for humor - you get to see him grunt and strain to get into his old costume, hear him brag about fighting Capt. America, and try to get it on with Weisz. But also, you find that he's a blowhard who cares at least a little for the girls who he pretended were his daughters. Weisz seems almost comically evil, but also just needs a good example to find the courage to fight Winstone. 

So even though it probably had too much going on for it's two-hour-plus run-time, it's good stuff. The villains are programming, mind control, and submission to authority - that's about Russia, but also other authoritarian regimes. the heroes are cranky, guilty, and not entirely on the side of good, but they care for each other in some way. Also, lots of fights and explosions.

It ends after the Infiinity Wars. The Black Widow has died and Pugh is putting flowers on her grave. Julia Louis-Dreyfuss shows up at the end, offering Pugh the job of killing the man responsible for her death. So it looks like Pugh will be the new Black Widow, and her first job will be killing Hawkeye. I mention this because when I checked Wikipedia, I discovered that JL-D is playing the Contessa, a 70's Agent of SHIELD character I always wanted more of. 

And to top it all off, we get a couple of jabs at Rob Liefeld, including a poke about the super-hero landing crouch and outfits with a lot of pockets.