How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 20 March 2014
This article is a review of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. |
“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) to Sam Wilson/The Falcon (Anthony Mackie)
At last! Marvel has gone and got political on us. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE meets STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS. The sequel to THE FIRST AVENGER, THE WINTER soldier has, like stablemates IRON MAN 3 and THOR: THE DARK WORLD, actually followed on from THE AVENGERS (2012). Each of our intrepid superheroes is coming to terms with a cataclysmic attack on the Big Apple by alien warriors. THE WINTER SOLDIER (and STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS) is a cinematic response to the September 11th attacks, looking at governmental reactions. Liberty, fear, security, all poured into the melting pot. Bravo, for such blockbusters not opting to offer up wafer thin excuses to blow stuff up.
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Don’t worry action junkies, stuff gets blown up in spades. Choreography of fisticuffs exhilarates, and is surprisingly bone-crunching – pushing the rating to the max. Slowing down the editing might have raised the flick to an adults only arena? Forsaking a crash bang opening, our hero (Steve Rogers/Captain America – Chris Evans) is doing laps in Washington D.C., the home to the Triskelion, superhero taskforce headquarters of S.H.I.E.L.D., where he meets sidekick-in-waiting Sam (eventually acquiring a prototype bird of prey style rocket strapped to him, to be Cap’s air cavalry). Fellow agent Black Widow drives up uttering droll Rogers diss, “Hey fellas, either one of you know where the Smithsonian is? I’m looking for a fossil.” Humour is witty and delivers, choosing banter (contrasting THOR’s self-awareness of absurdity, and IRON MAN’s pointed put-downs).
Now we get to see Captain America in action. Dropping from a futuristic heli-fighter plane, sans parachute, into the Indian Ocean, mission: Defuse a hijacking. CAPTAIN PHILLIPS the scenes are not. Diplomacy is by way of superhero martial arts – an usual and welcome portrayal of how a super-soldier would fight using an Adamantium shield (for those that have forgotten: Made-up metal, tougher than any known substance; coats Wolverine’s skeleton). Rather than the expected defensive manoeuvres, Steve Rogers wields it as skilfully as the war club employed by Chingachgook in THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Put it this way, you do not want to be on the receiving end.
Initial crisis averted, the hijacking triggers a chain reaction within the S.H.I.E.L.D. organisation rising all the way up to boss overseer, Secretary Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford, in a brilliant piece of casting – not only adding gravitas, but nods to 1970s conspiracy thrillers). And there is a conspiracy here! No one is safe, including agency director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). A stunning attack sequence involves an ambush to rival the bridge melee in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 3. Attention to detail is wonderful; having Tony Stark’s tech as the pinnacle, Fury’s on-board car artificial intelligence is just not Jarvis sharp, as ne’er-do-wells assault the surrounded vehicle in a barrage of gunfire and an unsettling jackhammer.
Marvel shows the action genre how to include a coterie of strong female protagonists. Captain America was born in 1918 – might the studio be crumbling the ageist ceiling too!
THE WINTER SOLDIER is unrelenting, creating a new benchmark for continuous combat. Think BLACK HAWK DOWN with added plot, brains and charisma. There are negatives of course, in particular: The comic book/graphic novel staple, of bringing characters back from the dead, irks even more in the cinematic realm – as threat levels get dampened. That aside, sit back (if you can pull yourself from the edge of your seat), and revel in the focused carnage.
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