Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Cinematography:
Trent OpalochCast:
Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Dominic Cooper, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Emily VanCamp, Robert Redford (more)VOD (4)
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From the Studio that brought you Marvel Studios' Avengers Assemblecomes an epic adventure that teams Captain America (Chris Evans) with the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Falcon to battle an unexpected and formidable enemy - the Winter Soldier. Expand your Marvel collection as you relive the ultimate battle for the future of mankind. (Disney / Buena Vista)
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Boring, boring, grey. There was some effort put into it, though. However, cinematic Marvel adventures set in the present are for a different target audience. I prefer to have some of that sequential art, as the film version of The Winter Soldier only served to make me cry over Steve and Peg's reunion. That was really touching. Other than that, I didn’t even enjoy Robert Redford, and that's saying something.
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The environment and era are changing, forgetting any idealism in terms of genre, moving from a number of surprising twists – and yet it's still number one. In the lead role remains a dedicated heartthrob, who you can't help but root for, and if I had to jump into any war, let it be the one where this guy is standing by my side. He is capable of clarifying the shadows of the past, lighting up the thickening future, and, in collaboration with the amazing Black Widow and the lovable Falcon, delivering lines in one continuous sequence against the backdrop of perfect action. Many may find plenty of mistakes in this comic book world, but I will not join them. A sixth five-star Marvel film in a row is no coincidence.
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Just as Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View were responses to Watergate, the second Captain America can be seen as a Hollywood interpretation of the events surrounding WikiLeaks and the NSA. What Steve Rogers has in common with the protagonists of those films by Pollack and Pakula is that he doesn’t know what’s going on around him or who he can trust, thanks to which the filmmakers can further develop the “fish out of water” motif without copying The Avengers (where the new age was the main source of Rogers’s confusion). Besides the inwardly focused disillusionment of those 1970s thrillers, recalled through the iconography of Washington, the casting of Redford and the music, this new Marvel flick contains a bit of the Cold War conservatism of movies – such Rambo (especially the first and third instalments) and Rocky (which The Winter Soldier recalls at least with the filming of the opening run) – that championed direct physical action over data analysis. Again, just as in the first, intentionally old-fashioned Captain America, the traditionalist protagonist takes on references to films with a different value base than that on which contemporary society stands. However, those values are not so clear. Only the final third of the film is unambiguous. With regard to the protagonist’s application of straightforward military logic, the restoration of calm does not involve diplomatic negotiation, but large-scale action that becomes less clear the more the characters go at each other (raw firefights in the streets in the style of Heat thus replace fights in which the action is created solely by editing, music and sound rather than by movement). The spy games with a touch of paranoia after the originator of the “contagion” has been revealed – with the use of black-and-white framing similar to that used today by the Russian media to justify the annexation of Crimea – can come across as hypocrisy in a film that outwardly express unease about a cynical system while actually defending its ideology. However, this reading is at least partially called into doubt by the closing repudiation of some of the old structures. At the stylistic level, I enjoyed the smooth (perhaps even too smooth) transition from brisk political thriller to conservative superhero adventure and I take it as evidence of the effort to not rely solely on the guaranteed teenage target group, but to also appeal to new viewers. And the film appeals to female viewers more imaginatively than other comic-book adaptations. Not even one of the three female characters has an identity derived from a male character (though there is a romantic subplot, there is no time to develop it), there is no sexualisation of the female body and all of the heroines are as comparably independent and courageous as their male counterparts. In summary, I don’t think that The Winter Soldier (whose titular character, incidentally, wouldn’t even have to be in the film and doesn’t have much of an impact on the plot) was such a safe bet as it may have seemed and or could have afforded to be. 85%
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The second Captain America, reasonably moved to the “present”, is more serious and filled with more physical action. It takes place predominantly in the streets (cars and shootings) and it’s nice that the movie’s best scene is dominated by Samuel L. Jackson. However, the conspiracy plot is unsurprising and becomes chaotic in the second half. The initial diversity of the action-scene settings also disappears in the second half. And the action scenes are not helped much by being finished with contrived twists (anyone can be rescued from anywhere at the last moment). However, the audience will be kept on their toes with respect to the identity of the intriguing villain until the end. And the villain’s shared past with the Captain saves the plot. As a spectacular comic book blockbuster that you can watch with your brain turned off, it’s not bad.
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A movie with two different halves. In the first, Marvel departs from its usual, inoffensive colorful safe family content into as yet unexplored waters of the more seriously-inclined comic book movies like those from DC. And believe it or not, this does the Captain unexpected good; the hand-to-hand, nineties style action is exactly what Marvel movies so badly needed. Unfortunately, everything falls apart after the bunker in New Jersey when the movie suddenly turns into a parade of one dumb deus ex machiny after another. Which wouldn’t necessarily have to matter in a standard, painted “ha, ha, ha" Marvel cartoon, but it seems really out of place here. When you add the unnecessarily disproportionate length, the unused potential of certain characters and with regard to all preceding contact action in the form of utterly unsuitable, commonplace CGI, editing-party finale, then... This way, this is certainly a good Marvel movie (and one of the three best so far), but nothing more. And the pleasant first half promised “more" in a style that I have been waiting for from Marvel since the first Iron Man.
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