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+

OLDBOY (2013)

For months I've been trying to think of a production as ill conceived as a remake of Park Chan Wook's 2003 film Oldboy. I have no idea who'd want to see this. Most remakes are done, I suspect, because the original is famous enough that the marketing can coast on the general public's nostalgia for the title. But Oldboy is fairly obscure, has little brand name recognition to cash in on, and is too unpalatable for general audiences. Furthermore, the people who do know it are mostly film lovers who generally hold it as a classic and wouldn't want to see it remade, even by Spike Lee, a great (if uneven) filmmaker in his own right. The only hope is for Lee, who delights in provoking, to come up with something so different that it stands apart as a new vision.

Unfortunately, Lee mostly just walks the line between doing his own thing, and staying within the confines of the established story. The results are well made and somewhat distinct from the original without being truly distinctive. The film starts in 1993 when we meet Joe Doucett (Josh Brolin), a rakish ad exec who neglects his family and is on the verge of losing his job. One particularly drunken night he's snatched off the street and wakes up in the locked hotel room where he'll spend the next 20 years.

The scene where Doucett discovers his predicament is very well done and the sequence makes the best case for Lee's version as an alternate take. Many of the beats from the original are there, but instead of trying to outdo the sheer propulsiveness of it, Lee instead slows down for something more intimate. Doucett doesn't know who imprisoned him, but he learns through his TV that he's been framed for the death of his wife. As the decades pass he'll quit drinking, attempt suicide, get in shape, plot escape, eat a lot of bad dumplings and in one touching vignette (Lee's best addition) befriend a family of mice living in the walls before they meet a particularly nasty fate.

After he is mysteriously released, the film starts to lose me. He makes contact with his old bartender (Michael Imperioli) and Marie (Elizabeth Olsen), a pretty doctor who helps him track down his tormentors. He kinda wants revenge, but mostly he just wants to clear his name and be there for his daughter, meaning the film must now link the two goals if the plot is to move forward, leading to the intervention of his former captor who puts a timeclock on the investigation. The captor is played by Shartlo Copley as a series of cartoon affectations, his long fingernails and Draco Malfoy accent eliciting Python levels of laughter in my screening. He's not just in a different movie, he's in a different galaxy.

Copley's performance is emblematic of a major issue with the film, it has no idea what it wants to do tonally. Lee isn't interested in replicating the original's theatricality, but when the material is gothic, operatic Greek Tragedy, it doesn't respond well to the comparative realism Lee imposes on it and the film often seems to be fighting him. No mater how much Lee tones down his own distinct style to compensate, this needs to be a quirkier film. Copely and a warden played by Samuel L. Jackson are some of the remnants of the Park weirdness (albeit without the dark humor), but outside of Jackson, they don't work, partly because of cognitive dissonance, and partly because Copley is terribly miscast.

Further wonkiness results from just how much of the original structure remains. Lee may deviate and elaborate, but he doesn't improve or fundamentally change, meaning fans will find Lee's alterations  mostly distracting. Neophites will get the most out of this, but they won't confuse the film with being a masterpiece. The ending still packs a wallop, but I believe newbies will sense how Lee and screenwriter Mark Protosevich overcomplicate it and dilute its horrific consequences. While the film has more than its share of nastiness, frequently trying to outdo its source, it's much less daring too. The downfall of Oldboy 2.0 (3.0 if you count the original manga) is that it does nothing to break free of the original's shadow, there are pieces of a truly original take on the material, but they're stuck in a film that just doesn't have the guts to go all the way with them.

Grade: C