Captain America The Winter Soldier Movie Review: It is clear that Hollywood's elusive entertainment cinema resides, today, in the pyrotechnic universe built by Marvel Studios. The publisher's plan to bring the adventures of its characters to the big screen by adapting the narrative functioning of its various comic book collections had some ups and downs in that prehistory we know as Phase 1, but since Joss Whedon's multi-million dollar turning point culminating in The Avengers (2012),
the film division of the House of Ideas seems to have found an effective, direct and spontaneous narrative formula that it successfully applies to new feature films, to the delight of its fans and the dismay of competing studios eager to reproduce it. In Captain America: The Winter Soldier we find a new iteration of the procedure that is perhaps the closest example of the comic book language parameters of what we have seen in Phase 2.
Captain America The Winter Soldier Movie Synopsis:
While Captain America: The First Avenger immersed us in the early years of the Marvel universe through the translation of the legendary comic to the big screen, now the hero returns with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This story takes place in the present and stars Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson, among others.
The plot of the story continues to revolve around the soldier Steve Rogers, who maintains his alliance with Nick Fury and the secret agency SHIELD and also tries to get involved in the modern world. However, there is something that Rogers did not imagine: an old comrade of his, known as the Winter Soldier, formerly Bucky Barnes, is found by enemy forces on a frozen lake. The villains of the film decide to take advantage of the discovery and train him to annihilate those they consider necessary.
Captain America, his friend Sam Wilson (The Falcon) and Natasha Romanov (The Black Widow) will join forces to fight against the forces of evil in this great adventure.
Captain America The Winter Soldier Movie Analysis:
Taking as a basis the "Captain America" arc written by Ed Brubaker in 2005 and known as "The Winter Soldier", the second individual film of the super soldier Steve Rogers moves away from the parameters of classic adventure that permeated the images of Captain America: The First Avenger (Joe Johnston, 2011). This time he wears a technological espionage thriller suit that, despite maintaining the direct and to-the-point narrative style of the scriptwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, seems to fit him more uncomfortably.
While Rogers remains the star of the film, much less out of place now in his return to life after seven decades of freezing (there are two jokes told in this regard), the value of his teamwork with old acquaintances Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), plus the addition of sidekick Falcon (Anthony Mackie) is fundamental.
However, we are not faced with the lack of relevance of the supposed protagonist that was in Thor: The Dark World (Alan Taylor, 2013) nor are the cogs of the buddy movie as well oiled as in Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013; probably the best post-Avengers Marvel film): Cap is the absolute star, with his unwavering values and nobility that is proof against power games.
The main conflict will lead him to face off against his own creators in a plot of betrayals that reaches the very core of S.H.I.E.L.D. and, more importantly on a personal level, revisiting his past several times, whether in the form of a simulation/homage, a very emotional but ephemeral vivid memory or as a long-haired and armed-to-the-teeth trauma; an eternal, always conflictive return that is surely the best stitch with thread of a script that is quite naive for the rest of the time.
Anthony and Joe Russo's approach to directing takes a backseat to their comedy careers (episodes of Arrested Development and Community, films like Welcome to Collinwood and You, Me and Now... Dupree) in favor of their comic book reading careers. The brothers seem to want to recreate with their images the experience of flicking your eyes from one panel to the next, leaving your retinas entranced by the splash page at the turn of the page.
The action set pieces follow one another generously, leading to a climax of visually spectacular aerial destruction. Still, both in that moment and throughout the rest of the footage, the images seem to want to tell us something much more surprising than what they're doing. Maybe at this point, watching a bunch of super-dupers kicking each other and flying through the air over a sea of flashing pixels isn't enough to amaze us.
This explains why The Winter Soldier grows in value and comes into its own in certain moments of truly golden conceptual refinement (planning a car chase in the middle of a traffic jam, a mass fight in an elevator or decrypting extremely dangerous secrets in an Apple Store), rather than in the orgy of superheroic spectacle that we already assume within a product of these characteristics.
In that aspect, the Russos and their film pass with flying colors; but as happens with Marvel's staple collections, to be noticed it is necessary to go further and differentiate itself from the mainstream.
Pros: A frenetic pace and high-level narrative economy without giving up giving depth to the characters... at least to those we already know (poor Agent 13).
Cons: Little sense of wonder and disappointing presentation of Crossbones.