Avengers: Infinity War – Film Review

Trying to wrangle so many characters and storylines together to make one gigantic crossover movie seemed like an impossible task and I had no idea how the Russo brothers would do it – but somehow they have. Despite the hype and anticipation, Avengers: Infinity War manages to meet expectations and even exceed them. So impressed.

This is a spoiler-free review so I’m going to keep it to the basic premise – Thanos (Josh Brolin) needs to collect all six infinity stones so he can control the whole universe. He wants to wipe out half the population, so the guys from Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers, Doctor Strange and Black Panther must team up to make sure he doesn’t get his hands on them all.

This has a running time of two hours and 29 minutes and that may sound ridiculously long but it doesn’t feel it when you’re there. It is jam-packed, rattling from one team to the next and everything is important, and when it reaches the cliffhanger ending you’ll wish there was more. Admittedly, it did take a while to get going for me – I liked it but wasn’t invested yet, but as the movie goes along, the emotional stakes get higher, team-ups are more creative and fresh, and the action steps up a notch.

It is exciting, fun, entertaining as hell and also rather emotional. I won’t spoil anything but the stakes are very real this time and will hit you right in the feels. Considering the movie primarily races from action to action, it’s impressive that the Russos and writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely managed to get such high emotion into relatively short scenes.

There is a huge cast to assemble for this and the character interactions are a joy to behold. I’m not going to list them all but I will shout out key players – Thanos, for being a properly good villain, with emotions and everything, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) for being generally awesome and fun, and Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) for just being his wonderful self. Drax (Dave Bautista) and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) made me laugh a lot and I loved seeing Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) kick ass, as well as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Okoye (Danai Gurira). I didn’t love Chris Pratt, he was trying too hard, and I don’t care as much for Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) as I used to, but it was great to see newbies like Letitia Wright doing their thing.

Avengers: Infinity War is pretty overwhelming and I’m probably going to have to see it again to fully take in all the awesome pieces of dialogue, appreciate the excellent direction and how the heck these guys managed to put the multiple puzzle pieces together and create something so epic. To sum it up: Wow.

In cinemas from Thursday 26th April