Captain America: The Winter Soldier – Movie Review

The moment they thawed out Captain America and he ran out into the streets of New York, only to see a new world around him, you knew there had to be major repercussions in store for the man out of time. Unfortunately, the timing of things was such that Steve’s reintegration into society had to be put on hold for several years, through alien attacks and gene-engineered soldiers and the powers of darkness, until he got a movie to call his own again.

Winter Soldier rapidly makes up for lost time, addressing Steve’s adjustments to the present time on every level. Much to its credit, the film treats jokes about the obvious pop culture gaps briefly, reducing them to an actual written list of items Steve’s instructed to look into, including I Love Lucy, Steve Jobs, and Marvin Gaye’s Troubled Man album. Instead, the film focuses on aspects of modern life that challenge Steve on a more personal level, pushing him to find his place in a world that respects his legacy, yet seems to have moved on from him.

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely make a particularly ballsy move by having Steve visit his old flame, Peggy Carter, in a nursing home. It would’ve been very easy to have written the movie so that Peggy had died by the time Steve returned, but it also would’ve been trite, encouraging him to live in the past by holding onto her memory. With her still alive, but convalescent and in the throes of dementia, Steve has to look straight at the tragic but unpleasant fact that he can’t go back to the way things were. The dance he promised her will never happen.

But perhaps the biggest trial of all for Steve is realizing that he can’t even fall back on a soldier’s life to keep him grounded, for modern life has changed that, too. The Avengers only touched upon the subject, but Winter Soldier unleashes some of the military’s biggest contemporary ethical dilemmas to see how Steve’s simple set of values handles them. Essentially, two conflicts pervade the film: the necessity and the pitfalls of secrets and lies; and the balance between freedom and security. Given that most of us struggle with these questions all the time, it’s a little disappointing that Steve really only grapples with these tensions for a few minutes in the first act, merely toying with the idea of leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. to figure them and himself out. Soon enough, he takes a firm stance on the issues, and not once for the rest of the movie does anyone seriously challenge his position.

He’s helped in this regard by the fact that Project Insight is just a monumentally wrongheaded plan, taking preemptive action to an almost ridiculous extreme. It should be no surprise this program—or should I say “pogrom”?—is conceived by an evolved offshoot of the Nazis, as it’s hard to believe any audience member would even for a second condone the mass murder (20 million all told) of anybody who bears simply the potential for disorder. In this regard—spoiler alert—mastermind Alexander Pierce is little more than a guerilla Hitler, more sophisticated in his tactics, perhaps, but no less obvious a villain, even from the very start. On the other hand, despite the failure of his primary goals, Pierce still scores a major victory by the film’s end, shutting down S.H.I.E.L.D. while Hydra is diminished but amuck, somewhere in the world.

I know all this sounds like a lot of criticism, and maybe in other films this would be. But this is a superhero movie, which is better-suited to opening up serious questions of morals rather than answering them, and which is best-suited for all-out fantastic degrees of action. Winter Soldier aces the test in this respect. While this movie has nothing on the Iron Man and Thor franchises in terms of pure visual spectacle, it has an even greater intensity by virtue of its greater dependence on physicality. Even with the rapidfire cutting to smooth out any bumps in the choreography (and disguise the stunt doubles), the speed, fluidity, and acrobatic genius of the fighters remains on constant fist-pumping display. At some points, the movements reach such stupendously intricate, daring levels that you wonder if the choreographers simply stole clips from the best Marvel vs. Capcom matches.

At the end of the day, however, Winter Soldier rises on the backs of its formidable ensemble. Unlike its cinematic peers, this movie sports not a weak link in any of its casting. Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson, and Scarlett Johansson have grown extremely comfortable in their roles and group chemistry, nailing every beat of drama and humor without even a hint of showing off. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson (a.k.a. the Falcon) fits right in with them, even from the first few seconds of the movie, a perfect foil to Evans’ Steve while being completely likable for himself. All the other players involved perform very well, confidently making the most of their time in the spotlight, yet keeping Steve the center of attention.

If there’s a real flaw with the movie, it’s that it doesn’t quite fulfill the promise contained in its very title. The Winter Soldier, despite participating in some of the movie’s pivotal moments, often feels like a tangential rather than driving force, probably because he has no self-motivation at all until the final moments. The emotional consequences of discovering that the Soldier is—spoiler alert—a revived Bucky Barnes are a hurried thing, developed only when the movie can spare a moment. As a result, the scene of Steve rescuing Bucky, echoing Bucky’s promise to stick with him “’til the end of the line,” then getting rescued by Bucky in turn, feels rote and obligatory in a generally easy-flowing film.

Conclusion: The movie does its job with great finesse, providing a re-watchable two hours of entertainment, even if it fails to generate much depth of conflict.

Grade: A-

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Parents, I beg you: please don’t bring your two-year-olds to watch a loud, violent, explosive movie in the dark. And for the love of heaven, don’t seat them in the middle of a row at the front of the theater so that it takes whole minutes to flee if they start wailing at the most intense part of the movie.

– I’m actually pretty disappointed that it was Natasha in disguise rather than the English World Councilwoman who demonstrated all that badassery.

– So what does all this mean for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Perhaps Victoria Hand is part of Hydra? Maybe with S.H.I.E.L.D. disbanded, Coulson’s team will keep some part of its spirit alive, somehow.