Finally the much awaited "Avengers: Infinity War" has hit the screens & as expected, the reception that it received was thunderous. It was a journey that began a decade back with "Iron Man" & after 18 movies which saw numerous solo superhero ventures, we have them join forces to battle Thanos, the mightiest villain to date. Most of the movies have been blockbusters & laid the foundation for future projects which in turn formed the framework for the Infinity War series. But the Russo brothers had a herculean task in front of them as they needed an engaging screenplay & ensure that all the characters were weaved into it effectively. So did they accomplish that???
Since there are quite a number of spoilers, I would try to keep the plot as brief as possible. If you have been a faithful follower of the Marvel movies, you would have noticed by now that Thanos has been on a mission to acquire the six infinity stones for a while. The purpose for doing so was to restore balance in the universe which was moving steadily towards self destruction due to over-population. After having acquired the Power Stone from Xandar, Thanos & his army intercepts the ship which contained the survivors from Asgard. Since the Space Stone was within the Tesseract, Thanos unleashes his fury on the Asgardians. So will Thor & Hulk be able to slither out of the spaceship & seek help before Thanos has his hands on yet another stone???
Some of the best movies in the Marvel Universe such as "Captain America: Winter Soldier & Civil War" are directed by the Russo brothers. Hence when it was announced that the brothers was at the helm for this 2 part series, I was naturally thrilled like the rest. To their credit, they have done a brilliant job in pretty much all aspects of the movie & a significant portion of this appreciation is due to the screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely.. The highlight is undoubtedly the balance between emotional content & humour, with neither of them going overboard at any instance. However, it does have a couple of drawbacks as well. With a running time of 154 mins, the film lags quite a bit at certain portions. Similarly, quite a few of the characters especially the ones that remain on earth such as Black Panther, Black Widow etc barely had dialogues to mouth. Lastly, the manner in which the superheroes gets eliminated was rather abrupt & lacked the impact that we believed it would create.
In the performance department, a handful of them were top notch primarily coz they had the screen time to perform such as Robert Downey Fr (Iron Man), Chris Hemsworth (Thor), Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Strange), Tom Holland (Spiderman) & all the characters from Guardians of the Galaxy. A special word of mention for Josh Brolin (Thanos) who apart from voicing for the character have also done motion capture for it. Without a shadow of doubt, Thanos was quite intimidating & physically imposing which went a long way in establishing the fact that a whole army of superheroes is indeed required to stop him.
Verdict: The film have already made a cracking start at the box office & has registered the second best collections of all time in the first two days of its run. Another major factor that will work in its favour is the positive word of mouth from all quarters. In short, the Infinity War has lived upto expectations for most parts & paved the path for the release of Captain Marvel & Ant-Man before the second part releases in just over a year's time. So dont miss it!!!
Rating: 3.75/5
Regards...Ben
