Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Since 2008's Iron Man, Marvel Studios has made eight films (by comparison, there have been 12 Star Trek films produced since 1979), and their only real strikeout was The Incredible Hulk, starring a destined-not-to-be Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. And that can be chalked up to the studio not yet having a good grasp of what the Marvel Cinematic Universe was - or what it could become. The studio’s latest, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is another solid base hit - a base runner just waiting to get home once the clean-up batter, in this case Avengers: Age of Ultron, gets up to the plate next year.
Chris Evans once again puts in a terrific performance as Steve Rogers - an earnest, honest, good-natured individual who embodies all that America can and should be. And yet, he never once comes across as square or old-fashioned. Quite the opposite in fact. He seems several steps ahead, as if he’s better than everyone - and knows it - yet is too humble to let it dictate how he treats people. While true that he’s a legitimate superhero, with super powers, his real super power seems to be his uncompromising morality - his only allegiance, despite what his uniform may lead you to believe, is to ethics and Truth. That doesn’t provide for a lot of character growth, but it does provide for an interesting character.
The story itself is engaging if a bit cliche. In fact, at times, it feels a bit too much like Iron Man Three. Wasn’t the United States government infiltrated by terrorists at the highest levels in that film as well? Oh well, it doesn’t detract from the story on the whole, but there isn’t anything terribly original here. Nonetheless, it’s enjoyable, and the conspiracy at the heart of the plot is the rare one that manages to be as dangerous and incendiary as the lead-up leads you to believe. And it has real repercussions for our characters and our universe, and that is to be applauded. Far too often in genre filmmaking (and television), producers make liberal use of the “reset” button - not the case here (well, not so far, anyway).
Where the film really shines, however, is in the action. While personally, I found the gun violence to be a bit too heavy handed (one of the things I tend to like about super hero films is that the violence isn’t grounded; it’s, by nature, fantastical - here, there are a lot of “real” deaths), the hand-to-hand combat scenes are really quite superb - fast, intense, closely shot, and hard-hitting. There are several times throughout this film where you can “feel” the pain, the nature of the hit. I was never particularly concerned for Thor’s safety during Thor: The Dark World or The Avengers, but here, Steve and company take a beating. It’s refreshing and thrilling to watch.
Though the climax doesn’t quite live up to its promise (one would think that three helicarriers battling it out over Washington, D.C. would top 40 or so Iron Man suits fighting fiery mutants at a desolate Miami port any day of the week, but that isn’t quite the case) and the plot is at times a bit arbitrary and on-the-nose (could not Project Insight simply have been implemented without asking permission from the World Security Counsel? Could not it have been implemented when Nick Fury was out of the country?), this is still a hugely enjoyable political-action thriller. It raises the stakes and the spectacle and leaves me hungry for more - bring on Summer 2015!
- R. Carrier
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