“Black Widow” (M) *

“BLACK Widow” is the most recent in that cohort of fantasy movies that venture into location and period to tell what is generally the same story, in which a bad guy is hell-bent on ruling the world and good guys rescue humankind from mass destruction or worse in the last reel.

In director Cate Shortland’s film of a screenplay by Eric Pearson and a small team of associate writers, no dark-skinned wife mourns the passing of a beloved husband. 

Nor does it feature venomous spiders of genus Latrodectus, which have a notorious place in popular imagination as inconspicuous venomous creatures that can kill a person with one bite. We call them redbacks.

According to a 2019 comic, “Avengers” founding member Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson’s ninth appearance in the role; she also has a credit in the list of executive producers) earns the sobriquet “Black Widow” because she works “like the deadliest of spiders, easily escaping notice until it is far too late”. 

That skerrick of information is all that sci-fi fantasy aficionados will need to confirm their suspicions about the film’s intentions. 

As well as Johansson, the female cast includes Florence Pugh playing Natasha’s younger sister Yelena and Rachel Weisz as their mother Melina. 

William Hurt plays chief villain Ross, Ray Winstone plays his right-hand nasty guy. Playing good guy Alexei (the Russian super-soldier counterpart to Captain America; ye gods, what next?) David Harbour growls through a super-luxuriant and super-unkempt beard. An ensemble of attractive young women of mixed race and colour play “widows” who move about the screen but say little.

Punch-ups are frequent and heavier-than-air machines defy many basic laws of nature such as gravity and principles of fixed-wing aviation, such as lift.

I discerned faint touches of feminist dialogue that went directly to reproductive anatomical matters in both genders.

The film’s reputed budget was $US200 million.

The closing credits list some 2700 people and corporate entities. For me, the best moment came after all their names rolled across the screen. In a brief envoi, Yelena and Melina visit Natasha’s gravestone. What’s the betting that she might get resurrected in a sequel?

At all cinemas