Black Widow

I saw Black Widow--finally!--over the weekend, and I enjoyed it very much. I watched this directly on Disney+ through their Premier Acess program, and I discovered that I now own a digital copy of BW (at least for as long as I'm subscribed to D+). Taking place right after the events of Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow finds herself on the run from just about everybody.

At least she has help in her family. "What family?" you might ask. The BW film establishes that Nat was part of an undercover spy operation where she posed as part of an American family when she was a child. Her younger "sister," Yelena, is engagingly played by Florence Pugh. Yelena basically comes off as sort of a mini-version of her big sister Nat, and it works very well. Pugh makes Yelena greatly sympathetic. And she handles herself very well in the action scenes.

Other standouts in the cast are Rachel Weisz (the 1999 Mummy) and David Harbour (Stranger Things) as Nat's "parents," who still bicker like an old couple. The Taskmaster makes for a formidable foe, and the action scenes overall are stellar. Scarlett Johansson is superb, as always, and will be missed all the more (the events of Endgame are being strictly adhered to). We should have received this movie a whole lot sooner, but better late than never.