{"id":668,"date":"2020-04-04T02:07:26","date_gmt":"2020-04-04T02:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?page_id=668"},"modified":"2021-07-11T23:42:50","modified_gmt":"2021-07-11T23:42:50","slug":"film-reviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?page_id=668","title":{"rendered":"Film Reviews of Joe Viglione THE BLACK WIDOW"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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Interesting that Marvel\/Disney goes out of its way to tell \npotential ticket buyers on the internet that the Black Widow is \u201cA film \nabout Natasha Romanoff in her quests between the films Civil War and \nInfinity War.\u201d You could have fooled me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the lesser Marvel characters, Scarlett Johansson, has appeared\n (by my count) eight previous times as the Widow since 2010, the \nthirty-six-year-old making her ninth appearance in this opus which \nshould firmly establish the star worldwide as a major part of the Marvel\n pantheon. The Black Widow as a motion picture is calculating and, \nactually, the filmmakers do to the audience what the master villain (and\n he\u2019s perfect) Dreykov (played by Ray Winstone) is doing to the women he\n kidnaps. Mind manipulation and control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marvel comics reinvented Black Widow in April of 1964, just about \nwhen this writer started buying the Marvel product, and whether the \nWidow\u2019s crazed Dreykov went on his mad spree of world domination first, \nor if it happened to be Ian Fleming\u2019s Blofeld in the On Her Majesty\u2019s \nSecret Service (part of the Bond\/Blofeld trilogy, written in April of \n1963 (I\u2019ll put my money on Bond,) both stories were custom made for the \n#METOO movement over half a century later. Women controlled by men are \nturning the tables on the oppressors! Dreykov\u2019s kidnapping and abuse of \nwomen in Black Widow echo the accusations made against Harvey Weinstein \nand others. Men of power controlling subordinate female kind. The \nsubliminal message, if it exists, or the feel of it muddies the waters. \n Muddies them as much as the over-action with things exploding and two \nsisters acting like Joan Collins and Linda Evans slugging it out in the \nDynasty swimming pool. Only this time with knives and stabbing weapons \nto paraphrase Arnie in the Terminator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Punching, car demolitions, planes, and citadels collapsing, \ncrumbling, and making for some dizzy, dizzy viewing \u2013 borrowing heavily \nfrom the Mission Impossible series, is the height of redundancy. The \nBlack Widow is one film where Marvel is counting on its vast following \nto gobble it up for some summer fun without following the elastic plot \nin dire need of a scorecard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Bond\u2019s magnificent 1969 On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret Service toyed \nwith the audience and had more cat and mouse restraint under director \nPeter R. Hunt\u2019s supervision, Cate Shortland\u2019s rough and tumble approach \nto The Black Widow seems guided by unseen hands. For a film promoting \nwomen, Cate Shortland seems like a prop rather than a director, and one \nassumes that the powers that be at Marvel\/Disney wanted to follow D.C.\u2019s\n lead after the success of the first Wonder Woman. Female director, \nfemale star, Wonder Woman in a land of ladies, The Black Widow a \nmanufactured artifact the result of women kidnapped on a grand scale. \nFilms designed to get boyfriends to bring their girlfriends to science \nfiction comic book movies.
\n007 1969 vs. The Black Widow 2021 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter R. Hunt had edited previous Bond films. He was the perfect\n supervisor for this legendary Bond entry, On Her Majesty\u2019s Secret \nService, though it was his first outing as a director. He kept the \nstoryline clean (and close to the Fleming novel) while \u2013 at times \u2013 Cate\n Shortland\u2019s The Black Widow has everything but the kitchen sink, trying\n to be all things to all people. The most interesting thing for this \ncritic, though, is the plot following the 1969 Bond film so closely\u2026 and\n how the villain saves the film from mediocrity. It\u2019s just too bad that\n Marvel didn\u2019t sit Shortland down to watch the Bond film a hundred times\n or more. Wikipedia gives information on the 007 classic: \u201cBond learns \nBlofeld has been curing a group of young British and Irish women of \ntheir livestock and food allergies. In truth, Blofeld and his aide, Irma\n Bunt, have been brainwashing them into carrying biological warfare \nagents back to Britain and Ireland to destroy the agricultural economy, \nupon which post-World War II Britain depends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Black Widow, villain Dreykov is far more driven and ruthless \nthan the seemingly kindly Count that Telly Savalas played in (as stated)\n one of the all-time best Bond films, George Lazenby\u2019s On Her Majesty\u2019s \nSecret Service (1969). That Savalas, as Blofeld, blows away Bond\u2019s wife \n(Avenger actress Diana Rigg) at the end of the film exposes Blofeld as \nthe murderer that he is. The goal, of course, exactly like Dreykov in \nthis Black Widow: world domination. Director Cate Shortland\u2019s muddled \nbeginning almost sends the film off the cliff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a critic stated about Batman vs. Superman, it was like putting \nyour head inside a beehive. Well, I won\u2019t be that lethal\/brutal on \nMarvel\u2019s newest entry to its film legacy, not so much with The Black \nWidow\u2019s first 45 minutes, which \u2013 at worst \u2013 are convoluted. BUT!, with \nmultiple superb villains, it pulls itself from out of the rubble and \nbecomes a decent and fun motion picture about halfway through to its \nconclusion. You can see the dysfunction in the May 2020 trailer from \nfourteen months ago. Yes, it is beautifully, splendidly filmed, but \nother than the location of Norway why go to Budapest and Morocco when \nthe scenes in those countries could\u2019ve been generated almost anywhere? \nThe July 2021 trailer fares somewhat better but is still inundated with \nvisual cacophony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n