Saturday, May 3, 2014

Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Movie Review

Starring Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Hayley Atwell and Toby Jones.
Directed by Joe & Anthony Russo.
★★★½
I'm continually impressed with the Marvel universe and how they're able to get it right, at least for those characters owned by Disney. I long for the Spider-Man and X-Men rights to eventually join their comrades under one studio banner. Even then, most of those movies were good too.
I'm particularly enjoying what they're doing with Captain America. He's a potentially boring goody two-shoes character, but thanks to Chris Evans and the writers, they're getting him exactly right. They are managing to pull off what Superman hasn't been able to do since Christopher Reeve's heyday.
Cap is still in present day, and the after-effects of The Avengers still ripples through his story. He's getting more and more concerned with Nick Fury and SHIELD, and how they operate. SHIELD has unlimited resources and weapons to battle terrorism, but are they getting too big?
He uncovers a conspiracy within SHIELD, but that makes him a fugitive from them. He gets some help from Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and new friend the Falcon (Anthony Mackie), but he also has to face a new enemy - the Winter Soldier, who looks like he went through the same transformation Steve Rogers did.
You veteran-actor villain is Sen. Alexander Pierce, played by Robert Redford. He was actually the weakest part of the movie, and if Redford's the weakest part of your movie, you're doing something right.
Disney's positioned Captain America 3 to open the first weekend of May in 2016, opposite Batman v. Superman. One of them has to blink, but based the reception of Man of Steel, and the fact that Zack Snyder's directing again, I think the DC crew should be the ones who find a new date.

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