You could almost argue that Black Widow is Marvel’s attempt to thank Scarlett Johansson by giving her an actor’s movie. By writing her a movie that allows her to stretch her acting skills and *gasp* actually play a three dimensional character. And also have all the whiz bang explosions of a Marvel movie. And I’m all for it.

Set after the events of Civil War, the film follows Natasha as she goes into hiding. She quickly reconnects with her past as a Russian assassin, encountering her other made-up family including Florence Pugh as her sister, Rachel Weisz as her mother, and David Harbour as her father/Soviet era Super Soldier (who clearly doesn’t have an inferiority complex with Captain America).

What this movies does hopefully will work for the Marvel fans. It tells a story about family and allows the actors and the camera to linger for lengthy dialog sequences (Vin Diesel only wishes his movies were this much about family). The main cast is particularly good, especially Pugh and Weisz (and Johansson of course). The amount of down-time focused on character growth where these terrific actors can just work together was, in my book, pretty fantastic.

But the film also gives us slam bang action in a spy-based story. The Winter Soldier played with paranoia thrillers in the same way this one plays with super spy films. In fact, Natasha seems to spend her evenings re-watching old James Bond movies… Roger Moore-era… which amuses me since now I’m wondering if the MCU has its version of Daniel Craig and if they are still cranking them out. But anyway, this film follows a lot of spy movie beats and that’s a lot of fun.

The action is generally quite good. There was an early hand-to-hand scene that felt a little shaky cam and the final blow-out action scene at the villain’s secret lair (so very 007) maybe got a little too busy. Kind of slowed down the pace when it should have been crackling. Not too bad though and we still get some elaborate chases and explosions and whatnot.

I also appreciate the sense of humor in the movie. Unlike a lot of MCU films, this movie doesn’t seem overly embarrassed by having cool moments. Yes, there’s some gentle joking about Black Widow’s hero poses but it’s not at all on the level of Guardians of the Galaxy 2 or Thor: Ragnarok. Those are two very good films but too often Marvel seems kind of embarrassed to be earnest.

So hopefully I’m not wrong about this one. I’d love that this film works for people since it worked pretty well for me. It’s not the BEST MCU movie, but I think it’s in the top ranks overall. Maybe not as a pure superhero film, but as a movie in general. If Scarlett Johansson never returns, then this is a fitting sendoff.

Score: 87