I didn’t want to go to the new Captain America movie The Winter Soldier – I was pressured
into it. I justified my cave in by noting that Soldier had been getting some positive reviews. Lesson
learned: stick with your instincts and pay no attention to movie reviews…
except my own of course.
Winter
Soldier is the sequel to Joe Johnson’s 2011 introductory effort – Captain America: The First Avenger. The
first Cap film was easy enough to forget, so I’ll remind you that we were all introduced
back then to Steve Rogers, a scrawny WWII army enlistee who, after being deemed
unfit for service, volunteers for a top secret research project that transforms
him into Captain America – a super soldier dedicated to defending America’s
ideals against all those who threaten them like the evil Hydra organization. It’s
now two years after the Battle for New York in which Cap participated as part
of The Avengers in the 2012 film of the same name. Although he’s been thawed
out for a while now from the deep freeze that allowed him to time travel to our
present, he’s still trying to decipher the new tech and the post-9/11, war-on-terror
infringements on the freedoms he fought for back in the WW-2.
The first Captain America film (The First Avenger) felt like
a rushed, and obligatory effort made just to get Cap introduced to the world in
time for the first Avengers movie. Winter
Soldier breaks out a bit, but still feels like simply one more cog in the
big Marvel money-making movie wheel. I’m not going to call Winter Soldier a bad film. But it’s not a good film either. It’s a
really, really, really average film – like smack-dab-in-the-middle, nothing-special,
mainly forgettable, how-many-times-is-he-going-to-slug-that-guy, super-hero
film. Punch up the definition of “average” on your iPhone Dictionary App and
this movie should come up. And it’s not that I am holding the bar too high on
these Marvel films. I grew up reading these guys in the 12-cent drug store
comics. I understand the genre – they’re not The Grapes of Wrath or Of Mice
and Men – I get that these movies are based on outrageous premises and
plots that accompany colored pages inside really thin little magazines. But the
good ones can still move us a little beyond the POW! and BANG! of it all – maintaining
the fantasy and maybe the camp of their source, but adding something special
and sophisticated. Batman Begins and Spiderman II (Doc Ock) are examples of this
type of moderate transcendence. And Winter
Soldier does try to step up… it tries hard not to be ordinary. The story’s
creators (directed by Anthony and Joe Russo) serve up a present-day-relevant security
vs. freedom theme in a conspiracy/espionage wrapping, and the addition of
Robert Redford to the cast definitely brings some weight to the screen. But the
nothing-is-as-it-seems and don’t-trust-anybody (Col. Fury actually vocalizes this
cliché) plot tools eventually devolve toward heavy, and not so special, CGI mayhem
and the ritual audience-endurance test that is the final battle between the
super hero and super villain.
One could think that the odd selection of directors Anthony
and Joe Russo, whose previous work has been almost exclusively in
comedies, was made to add some spark to this bland entry into the Marvel film
universe. At the least, I expected the film to have a sharp comic undertone.
But there are few laughs in Winter
Soldier. What we are offered, however, is a lot impressive ninja moves. Everybody
is a ninja in this one. It appears that both S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra have top-notch
ninja training programs. And that is important in a Captain America film
because Cap is not nigh immortal like some of his other Avenger teammates (i.e.
Thor and the Hulk – by the way… where were the rest of these S.H.I.E.L.D heroes
while all the chaos was going on? – Cap could’ve used the help). Cap is just a
suped-up mortal and you can’t have too many bombs blowing up or shots fired off around him since they’d actually do some damage if contact were made… hand-to-hand is a better option for Captain America. Oh, shots were fired every
now and then but the aim wasn't quite right – memorandum to the bad guys… when
you finally get a chance to shoot your weapon at Captain America, don’t aim at
the shield… it just bounces off you see. And so it went. Really nothing new
here, although the film's makers would like you to think there is. Don’t trust anyone.
5 out of 10.
