Captain America is a tricky Marvel
character to sell to global movie market, despite his recognizable brand and the
backing of a powerhouse film production conglomerate. These days people are a little jaded when it comes to national pride and a
character that fights for truth, justice and the American way is an
increasingly harder pill to swallow, especially when party divisions have dramatically
split the country on the specific interpretation of what the “American
Way” is even supposed to be. Even when conflict is injected into the character to please those on the homeland, the blatantly
patriotic imagery of Cap-Am risks appearing like propaganda to
those abroad.
Though Disney/Marvel
Studio’s first attempt to introduce this character in 2011 wasn’t an altogether
failure, it really only managed to work as a placeholder for the anticipated
Avengers movie being hyped at time. Now, with the overwhelming success of “The
Avengers” in 2012, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” is afforded the
benefit of doubt by those who may have been skeptical before. Surprisingly, in
changing time-period, style, tone and directors, this movie cleverly takes
advantage of its second chance and manages to exceed expectations by simultaneously defying and celebrating its genre-conventions.
Having
grown up in the ‘30s and ‘40s, only to be preserved in ice and unfrozen to
become a superhero soldier, fighting alongside sci-fi anomalies like Bruce
Banner’s Hulk and Tony Stark’s Iron-Man, Steve Rodgers (Chris Evans) is now
suffering from state of mild temporal dysphoria, with only his work as a
SHIELD super-spy to keep him focused and grounded. However, when his boss and mentor, SHIELD’s leader Nick
Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is targeted and hunted by his colleagues, Captain America is then
forced to go rogue and figure out how high the governmental corruption infiltrates.
Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and military veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie)
help Rodgers with his impossible mission, while keeping guard from a mysteriously lethal mercenary known as the Winter
Soldier.
It’s actually
difficult to be prepared for just how exceptional this pop-corn thriller is.
Not since Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” has a sequel so magnificently
improved upon its predecessor in a way that actually fixes some of the problems
of the previous film. Rather than the cartoony, gee-golly pulp aesthetic of
Joe Johnston’s “Captain America: The First Avenger”, Joe and Anthony Russo’s steely, post-Bourn,
politically-minded sequel resembles the kind of cool immediacy of Michael
Mann’s “Heat”, as well as ‘70s paranoid dramas like “The French Connection" and "All the President's Men." The tensely-blocked, handheld bursts of action-violence
is impactful, the performances are confident--particularly Evans who'd previously appeared a little stiff within the do-gooder limitations of his characters--and unlike even the best films from Marvel’s amoeba-vers, this world feels lived-in and dangerous
with a semi-realistic sense of scale and threat.
With
that said, this is still a comic-book action movie aimed at a young teenage audience,
and we're reminded of that whenever the plot makes an illogical leap or when there's an
occasional tonal hiccup. This includes some high-concept
sci-fi tech that feels out of place compared to the movie's more sober interpretation of the Marvel world, as
well as, a sporadic line of Saturday-morning dialogue. In the third act, as is the demand
for any film that costs more than 100 million dollars, the movie eventually
devolves into an extended effect-driven sequence, slowly drifting the whole thing away
from the refreshing tactility and level-headed sophistication it had built up
to that point.
Flaws
and nitpicks aside—though not excused—“Captain America-The Winter Soldier” is still
an exciting and daring move forward for the superhero genre, and it at least hints
towards a maturity that Marvel Studios hasn’t been as interested in exploring since the
Iraq war metaphors of the first “Iron Man."
Here, themes of political unrest and social distrust regarding NSA monitoring
and military drone technologies make this sequel not only satisfying as a genre
picture, but timely and relevant as well.
Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/April-2014
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