I really enjoyed the movie, I thought the story was both a good stand alone in my favourite lane as well as adding some nice depth to Natasha, finally filling in the Budapest backstory and introducing a great set of new characters in her "family". Yelena is an instant winner, sexy, spunky and with lots of sarcastic humour, the running gag over Nat's posing was funny. Rachel Weisz does a good job with the least to work with and David Harbour was very entertaining as the comic relief. The chemistry between Nat and Yelena is the movies driving force, with banter you rarely see between female characters.
The tone is very much like the Bourne movies while the big set pieces are Bond style, especially the sequence where they broke Red Guardian out. The action sequences are really well done, the bike/car chase was dynamic and the breakout sequence was great spectacle, snow bases and choppers? Yes please!
The bridge showdown with Nat and Taskmaster was edited a tad choppily imo, at least on first viewing, but the finale with them plummeting through the air after she saves Yelena was spectacular.
Overall it hit all the notes I was looking for, a good espionage story, an exploration of the idea of family, finally finding out what happened in Budapest, big action sequences, Nat getting her solo spotlight, Yelena being a breakout character and a decent dollop of humour. I do think they didn't need to use Taskmaster for the character in this movie, they could have just invented a new assassin character, but I thought Ray Winstone brought a lot of menace to Dreykov and I liked his final showdown with Nat, as it was a cool riff on the way she played Loki in the Avengers.
