What I’m watching: modern summer movies

Date: 7/19/2021

In theaters: “Black Widow”

Although I enjoy many of the Marvel superhero films, not all of them have impressed me. This one, essentially an origin story, is actually about something other than folks in costume beating up someone.

Since the character sacrificed herself in the last Avengers movie, this is not a sequel, but a prequel to the events of the last two Avengers movies. Set during the period just after the events of the third Captain America film,  “Civil War,” we find Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, (Scarlett Johannson) on the run from federal authorities. It is clearly a time when she is questioning her life and that brings up her past.

While fans know she was a Soviet agent trained since childhood, we get to see parts of her childhood and it was not pretty. When she is forced to go to a safe house in Hungary, she is reunited with her younger sister, Yelena (Florence Pugh), who is now a trained assassin herself. After the get-to-know-me fight, we learn both women were taken from their parents and their fondest childhood memories was from when they were posing as a family with two other agents in an undercover operation in Ohio in the 1990s.

Those two people – the Russian version of Capt. America, Alexei (David Harbour) and a scientist Melina (Rachel Weisz) – make up the only family either woman remember.

We also learn there is more than one Black Widow. In fact Yelena is a one and there are dozens others in service to Dreykov, (Ray Winstone) a Russian general and spymaster.

Yelana, though, has been exposed to a chemical that frees her mind from Dreykov. Both women want to find him, kill him and free the other women.

This is, however, more than just an action film. It is also a movie about a person trying to define herself. It’s about redemption in many ways. This story element adds much additional texture to the story.

This is only the fourth feature film by director Cate Shortland and she did well with the epic nature of this kind of movie. Despite the need for action, Shortland makes sure the emotional journey of the characters is front and center.

Harbour provides some comic relief as the former Russian superhero who still sees both young women as his “daughters.” I loved the sequence in which his character manages to squeeze himself into his former costume.

This is the best kind of summer movie: action, comedy and an actual human story.

In theaters: The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard

A sequel to the 2017 action comedy, this film reunites Ryan Reynolds with Samuel L. Jackson in a remarkably silly, violent and profane film that, nonethless, entertained me.

There is little point attempting to describe the plot, which is presented in an often-convoluted fashion by director Patrick Hughes.  It makes very little sense. Just let it wash over you. Don’t question it.

The film comes off as a live-action R-rated cartoon and depending upon your mood, you will be either bored, repulsed or amused by it.

I was greatly amused. That might tell you about my current frame of mind.

It’s not a very good film in many regards, but if you check your expectations – and standards – at the door, you may like it. It’s  a very guilty pleasure.