Black Widow fails in its attempt to tell a gritty superhero movie with its lack of stakes, underwhelming storytelling, and unashamed poaching from better MCU films before it.

Director Cate Shortland has said the goal for Black Widow was to make it “gritty, grounded, and real”. She should have aimed for engaging, entertaining, and comprehensible.

Shortland, whose previous credits include dramas Sommersault and Lore, feels incredibly out of her depth as an action filmmaker, with Black Widow essentially a rip-off of Captain America: The Winter Solider, yet of much less quality and a more boring protagonist. Fans have clamoured for a Black Widow movie for years, yet the character’s first solo outing proves she works best as part of an ensemble. That Scarlett Johansson, in her ninth appearance as Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, is constantly outshined in the film speaks to this.

Set after the events of Captain America: Civil War, the 134-minute Black Widow catches up with Romanoff who is laying low in the outskirts of Norway. It doesn’t take long for Romanoff to be thrust into a world domination scheme in which her former Soviet handler Dreykov (Ray Winstone) has brainwashed an army of female super spies, or “widows”, into doing his bidding.

Romanoff must rely on her former faux “family” – little sister Yelena (Florence Pugh); mother and scientist Melina (Rachel Weisz); and Soviet super soldier Red Guardian (David Harbour) – to help her thwart Dreykov’s devious plan.

It is all presented in the most bland and generic MCU way possible, with Shortland and screenwriter Eric Pearson (Thor: Ragnarok) seemingly too preoccupied in selling a narrative that is akin to The Handmaids Tale meets the Bourne Supremacy as opposed to an engaging story.

The films villain Dreykov is as boring an antagonist as they come, especially in a cinematic universe populated with colourful super-villain’s that often outshine the heroes. Just as bland is the films “times up” narrative that has passed its use-by-date in favour of other social political movements, which Marvel will no doubt be sure to exploit as well.

The best moments in Black Widow are found in the supporting cast. David Harbour brings an entertaining comedic element as Red Guardian, and Florence Pugh continues her strong run of performances as the heir apparent to the Black Widow throne.

Both Shortland and Johansson take extreme liberties with the superhero capabilities of the Black Widow character. The charm of Black Widow is that she is a human of much skill yet no superpower who takes part in battle alongside gods and monsters. There are action scene moments in Black Widow that are mind boggling in their incomprehensible leaps of logic that are even way out for a superhero film. It is an approach both frustrating and lazy, which is an apt way to describe the film as a whole.