UK Release Date: 26-04-2012
Starring: Robert Downey Jnr, Scarlett Johansson
UK Certificate: 12A
Director: Joss Whedon
Country: USA
Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Joss Whedon has been busy lately. Not only has he been getting his hands bloody with The Cabin in the Woods as producer and writer, he has also stepped up to the plate with his shot at directing a blockbusting Marvel outing. And they don't come much bigger than Avengers Assemble. With four superheroes vying for screen space and three S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to boot. The result could have been a noisy, incoherent mess; that it isn't is a marvel in itself. The two hours plus running length of Avengers Assemble simply flies by, most of the time literally, with enough skull-crunching super-charged superhero face-offs and gravity-defying battles to fill half a dozen similar outings.

Quite simply this is the best fun I've had watching a film in ages. For a couple of hours I was a teenager again. The one-liners are superb, the slugfests between superheroes as a result of those classic comic strip misunderstandings, so crucial for super favourites to get all Rock 'n' Roll on each other, are consistently exhilarating. The film reaches a spectacular climax, managing to match in spectacle all the spectacular carnage that has gone before. There was one fidgety moment for me when it threatened to get all talky in the sky in what turned out to be a very brief lull before (another) perfect storm of action to come.

What Joss Whedon manages to do is create an ongoing storyline of incident and wisecrack-packed momentum while linking together character backstory without getting all bogged down in the mire of hero mythos. Samuel L Jackson's Agent Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the lynchpin in all this, a puppeteer pulling the strings of each uncooperative superhero with one eye closed, but with some very sinister paymasters, with all their beady eyes open, instructing him to watch over the world. Which is under threat, by the way, from Thor's sulky (adopted!) brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who, with his penchant for pyromania and general mayhem (and in cahoots with an enemy so dangerous that even a god doesn't frighten it) seeks no less than that the world kneels before him - after he has reduced it to near rubble. Go figure. Ours is not to reason why.

Once upon a time before comic books became graphic novels and tomes of profound philosophical enquiry between folk sporting tight pants, many of them used to be about good and evil fought between folks sporting tight pants. Because. Just because. With the world itself under threat Fury decides that the only way it is going to be saved is "the old fashioned way", by good people beating bad people. And in that old fashioned world of yore you know who the bad people are.

But with a a wonderful sleight of directorial hand Joss Whedon (let's not forget that his only full directorial outing before this was Serenity) gives us all the contemporary moral ambiguity we could ask for through the two most vulnerable characters in terms of prowess: Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), the flesh and blood assassins. Scarlett Johansson in particular has to shoulder her fair share of the film, her goal to clear some of the 'red ledger' she has built up in her less than noble Natasha Romanoff past. While Hawkeye is soon intent on catching up with her in writing up his less than noble ledger in red.

Joss Whedon and Zak Penn's script rattles along at a great pace, injecting vital information as neatly as the succession of one-liners every character gets to utter at one point or another. The film could as well be titled Avengers Ensemble as Assemble, because it is very much an ensemble film. It is as much Robert Downey's film (another of his effortlessly slick performances as a super-smart charming braggart) as it is a re-imagined Hulk's film (Mark Ruffalo), who in this rebooting of the Hulk's character boots into touch so much that didn't work in the previous two attempts: "Hulk: smash!". Yes! Hiddleston as Loki has a lot to to do, too, all by himself, as the only nasty smiling, mischievous bastard of an (adopted!) god on screen. And it also as much Johansson's film as theirs. Besides the intermittent presence of Maria Hill's Agent Cobie Smulder who you really want to see more of after she carries much of the film's we're-setting-out-our stall-of-what-you-can-expect opening sequence, and a barefoot, flirtatious cameo from Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts, Black Widow is the token deadly female among a bunch of pugilistic super men.

Johansson more than holds her own and her costume just about holds her. She might not be everyone's idea of Black Widow but she is sensational in the context of her onscreen cohorts and the viewer is treated to plenty of her kick-ass creativity shown so tantalisingly in Iron Man 2. Chris Hemsworth's Thor thunders, Chris Evans' Captain America learns not to be such a conservative tight arse and his 'ten dollar joke' is wonderfully throwaway. Add to all this an affecting death of a key character and a CGI onslaught that never loses sight of what exactly is going on, like Iron Man says: "I'm bringing the party to you, guys!" We get a good idea who's partying and why - and it's a great party. Joss Whedon almost never misses a beat in balancing humour and action with a constant sense that various bits of flesh and bone are at stake. This is big bucks blockbuster entertainment at its very best, smart enough to know when not to be too smart and just get on with being downright entertaining and I simply can't wait to to see it all over again!