Watched it recently. Didn't have as warm a reaction than most others.
I'll start by saying what I liked, the more grounded story was definitely needed after the way phase 3 ended. The acting is generally solid. The action sequences are pretty good across the board and I liked the soundtrack.
Past that though, without getting too much into it I thought the story was ultimately pretty dumb at the end. The only thing I truly enjoyed about the story was the fake family coming together to be a real one. I didn't like having a character whose most compelling aspect was her checkered and mysterious past have the veil on that past lifted. I didn't like how we have yet another shadow organization/figure manipulating world events without any indication of their impact in any other MCU property. And I found the last act in general...the only way I can describe it is in Winter Soldier, the last act almost goes too far in teetering away from its more grounded first 2/3rds, Black Widow to me went too far.
Another thing that bothered me is that while I get this is the MCU, the MCU has made it a point to show that Natasha is not a super solider. Within the first 20-30 minutes I counted three events that would have certainly killed, paralyzed, or at the very least injured to the point of incapacity any normal human being. Her surviving her car getting blown up, whatever. It's become such a movie trope I can't get that mad. But for the third, she gets thrown from a building, falls several stories before hitting a metal beam, and then hits the ground below and just grimaces, gets up and walks to a Widow to check on her before the Widow dies. And she's fine for the rest of the movie. That kind of thing really tests my capacity for suspension of disbelief and maybe I was biased against the movie from that point on.
Also a lot of people praise Florence Pugh's performance and I'm not going to rag on her completely, but I found her comic relief to be almost entirely annoying rather than amusing. She made me crack up once, when she was talking to Harbour about the female reproductive system to make him uncomfortable. After a while I'd wince any time the screen would pan to her thinking "what uniquely quirky and sarcastic thing is she going to say next?" Also it's a small quibble but her accent was pretty inconsistent in the first half of the movie. I didn't want her to be a Russian stereotype but it was pretty obvious at times. All that said, she does have the best emotional weight in the movie. All of the above being as gripey as it is, it's clear she's a very talented actress. The only time the movie made me feel anything is the moments where you see a woman who had the upbringing she did but was still a kid at heart. A kid who never really got to be a nomal kid. A kid who wanted a real family and placed all her love and value of life in a family that wasn't real, and all her trauma growing up manifested into this really tragic desire to have her fake family become her real one. I thought that part of the film was very well written and executed by Pugh's performance.
Overall it was fine, but not the strongest MCU entry for me. There were some good pieces there but they missed the mark in too many ways for my liking.
