CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Rarely has a franchise shifted gears so radically as Captain America. The character is, by far, the oldest in the Marvel Cinematic lineup, as testified by the decidedly retro tone of the original, a fun piece of jingoistic nonsense which saw Steve Rogers (Chris Evens) injected with super-serum and fighting rogue Nazi's. The sequel, subtitled The Winter Soldier, does away with the gee-wizz sensibility and thrusts it's boyscout hero into a much more paranoid and cynical world and even finds the time to cast the jingoism of the original in a colder light. There's still some retroness in this approach, but its 70's inspirations are carefully updated so that, until it goes completely nuts in the second half, it feels about as relevant and ripped from the headlines as any comic-book movie before it.

Part of the intrigue comes from Cap himself. Due to spending most of the last seventy years in stasis, he's about as removed from the modern world as it's possible to get. Sometimes that's adorable and winning (he keeps a running list of pop-culture to catch up on), but his rah-rah, straight arrow enthusiasm isolates him, he's almost friendless, and conflicts with his morally hazy missions for S.H.I.E.L.D., which often involve him flying into dangerous missions and busting chops of whoever he's being told is the bad guy that day. As the film starts, the once idealistic Rogers is harboring serious mistrust for his spymasters, a situation not helped when on one mission he discovers his partner Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) has a few secret objectives of her own.

For a little while, directors Joe and Anthony Russo (known mostly for their TV comedy work on Community), construct a fairly interesting social, political backdrop for Caps disillusionment that plays like a very savvy update of 70’s political thrillers. Cap's mistrust and discomfort mounts when he learns of a major operation to build a series of drone like helicarriers that can take out mass numbers of potential targets from sub orbit, completely at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s discretion. The film takes all the implications of this more seriously than previous Marvel films do, resulting in some interesting, character revealing discussions between Rogers, Fury and Johansson who all have different views of how to serve America. We also get Anthony Mackie as an ex-paratrooper suffering from PTSD who has some nifty superhero gadgets to rival Cap’s shield and, in a clear nod to the Russo's inspirations, Robert Redford as a S.H.I.E.L.D. higher up who will in no way turn out to be evil.

There's also the titular Winter Soldier, for which we should be grateful that, for once we have a compelling villain in this series. He isn’t the focal point we'd expect him to be, but he’s good for a few solid revelations (though fans already know what they are) and he gets a terrifying entrance, emerging out of a cloud of smoke after attacking Fury in broad daylight in the streets of D.C. with a cadre of mercenaries.

Action is, unfortunately, a bit of a weakness here. The Russos' smartly don’t oversaturate us with beats, but when the action scenes start, the sparse, almost minimalist aesthetic they’ve carefuly constructed falls by the wayside and we get a lot of shakycam set against bland backdrops. It’s not the worst example of the technique, but while the scenes stand in considerable contrast to classicism of the first film, they lack showmanship and the approach feels like a choice made by a second unit director rather than one that fits in with the rest of the project. The climax feeling particularly clumsy, with characters in multiple locations executing complex, partially unnecessary sounding objectives that editing refuses to make clear. The action is saved almost completely by virtue of the sense of danger the Winter Soldier brings with him as a character, which is a step in the right direction for a franchise where the stakes of action scenes are often flat.

Also, after all the enticing allegory of the first half, the film almost effortlessly jumps into la la land with a twist that attempts to further link the idea of mass surveillance to old-school fascism, and set up events for Avengers 2, but is so comically on the nose that the film looses all semblance of credibility. I suppose that is to be expected in this kind of movie, which is a slave to pulpy thrills before anything else, but with such a great setup and all that great character development, it's a shame that it moves so sharply away from the relevance it started with. The film is another missed opportunity for Marvel, but the mega-franchise is getting closer to making a meaningful film.

GRADE: B+