Marvel's Black Widow is a must see - Arc Cinema Hucknall review

We all know the elements that make up a true Marvel classic – action, intertwined storylines, good v evil with the odd blurred line and a chance to escape into an action-packed fantasy.

And Widow certainly lives up to all of these traditions and gives at every turn – so much so that the near two-and-a-quarter hours flies by as fast as Thor’s hammer!

As is the way with many Marvel movies, the writers manage to shoe-horn Black Widow into the heavily congested universe's timeline before the Avengers: Endgame finale.

It picks up after 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and Natasha Romanoff, codename Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is in exile in Norway and bidding to remove herself from the grid.

But that plan is thrown into disarray when she crosses paths once again with her younger sister Yelena (Florence Pugh).

In a series of revelations the tale unravels to explain that both Natasha and Yelena are products of the infamous Red Room.

This is a sinister programme run by General Dreykov (Ray Winstone), who was thought to be dead at the hands of Natasha, that involves snatching young girls from their lives and throwing them into a brainwashing process designed to create an elite band of female assassins.

The ultimate aim for Dreykov is to control these killers by chemical means to the extent that he can hold the world’s future in his hands.

Only the sisters stand in his way if there is any hope to prevent his maniacal blueprint.

Or so we think until they enlist the help of their ‘parents’ – scientist Melina (Rachel Weisz), who plays double agent as Dreykov’s trusted lieutenant and bumbling Alexei (David Harbour), who was genetically modified as Russia’s first ‘super soldier’.

This is a definite must-see, especially for Marvel fans.

And one piece of advice – stay seated until after the credits for a sneak peek of the Widow’s future!