Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) takes enough physical punishment to kill a baby elephant, after which she just downs some ibuprofen and she's good as new. Watching this movie, I would have sworn that she is immortal.
Once upon a time the indestructible and invulnerable entity was the villain of the movie (cf. The Terminator, Alien); Black Widow would make a fine antagonist, as she was originally in the comics – as a hero, however, she's too inhuman for us to identify with.
The villains are equally underwhelming, which is unforgivable in a movie that features William Hurt and Ray Winstone, and wastes them both on glorified cameos. Thus, we have to make do with Antonia Dreykov[a] (Olga Kurylenko), alias Taskmaster, who has all the charisma and finesse of the old WCW's Shockmaster.
The movie as a whole seems to take place in a weird alternative reality wherein the Cold War is still booming, but at the same time everyone in Russia — including prison inmates — speaks English fluently. From a certain point on all the main characters start pulling tricks out of their sleeves — including but not limited to a Face/Off — so arbitrarily that Black Widow ends up resembling not so much a Marvel movie as the old Batman TV show.