Captain America

Special treat today: I came back from watching “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” so I will do another “The Avengers” build up review. But first, before I talk about this one, it would be best if I told you what I thought of “Captain America: The First Avenger,” released in 2011.

It was a pleasure to know, once “Captain America: The First Avenger” was being made, that it was going to be a real movie and not a noisy assembly of incomprehensible special effects. No doubt about it, it has a lot of CGI, but what movie nowadays does not? It goes without saying it’s unbelievable. But it has the texture and takes the care of a full-blown movie. Like a hero that we care about and has dimensions, with the weight of the story. Roger Ebert said in his review, “As we plunge ahead into a limitless future of comic-book movies, let this be an inspiration rather than "Thor" or "Green Lantern."”

The words “The First Avenger” are filled with significance for Marvel fans. Before this one was released, there were films inspired by “Iron Man,” “Hulk” and “Thor.” Ones that are still being in the development stages are “Ant-Man” and “Wasp.” This film opens with the discovery of an enormous flying wing surrounded in polar ice, and a gloved hand reaches out to brush away the ice on the window, and there’s Captain America’s shield! Ebert says, “This film's plot involves his origin story and adventures during World War II, and I'm sure we'll discover in sequels that he was revived after the cryogenic nap to crusade again in the new day.”

We open with the classic 90-pound weakling. Comic books around that time had ads which featured muscle men kicking sand into the face of such variety, which were advised to mail-order Charles Atlas for body-building help. Young Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans, is a puny Brooklyn kid who gets beat up by bullies. He dreams of joining the Army and defending America against the Nazis. When he gets turned down as 4-F, he tries enlisting again and again, and eventually makes it into basic training, which is the part we see him constantly falling off the rope and bringing up the rear.

However, this kid has got a lot of heart. This fascinates the hot-head Colonel Phillips, played by Tommy Lee Jones, and a scientist named Erskine, played by Stanley Tucci, who supervises a secret government program. Without wasting any more time, and without really giving an explanation, he’s strapped into a menacing casket in Erskine’s laboratory, which gives out sparks and smoke, and is transformed into the new Steve Rogers, now a foot taller and built like Mr. Universe. He gets a costume and a stars-and-stripes shield, which is primarily for him to be highly visible, although the shield has special powers (but only when it’s thrown at the right angle).

Steve’s Army confidante both before and after his transformation is the hot Peggy Carter, played by the attractive Hayley Atwell, whose red lips makes her resemble a classic military pin-up of the period. He narrates their tour of the Brooklyn neighborhoods where he was bullied, and they grow close, but only PG-13 close, because Marvel has apparently thought up that the idea of someone making out on screen is nasty.

Now the full-bodied story comes into play, involving, as all good comic-book movies have to do, a really first-rate villain. This is a Nazi commandant named Johann Schmidt, played by the great Hugo Weaving, who essentially controls his private army and has schemes that are greater than Hitler’s. His soldiers salute him, not Der Fuher, and he has dreams of creating super weapons. Eventually, as the rules of comic book drama require, Captain America has to face off against Schmidt, who is revealed to be Red Skull, whose skin tone, as Ebert describes, “makes him resemble those ducks marinated in red sauce you sometimes see hanging in Chinatown restaurant windows.” Schmidt demonstrates once again that, when it comes to movie villains, you can’t do better than Nazis.

The film fully embodies the Marvel mythology, giving Captain America his sidekick Bucky Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan, not such a kid as he was in the comics. We also meet Howard Stark, played by Dominic Cooper, who supports Erskine’s research and will go on to be the father of Iron Man. And there is Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, another World War II hero who is going to one day have a comic book series of his own, and eventually have his own movie. Jackson has what it takes to play a first-rate superhero. Spoiler alert: at the end of the movie, it shows that Rogers wakes up in a 1940s hospital room. When he realizes that something is wrong, he runs out of the building and finds himself in modern-day Times Square. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents surround him, and Nick Fury comes out informing him that Rogers has been asleep for nearly 70 years. In the post-credit scene, Fury approaches Rogers with a mission with worldwide consequences.

The adventures of Captain America are made-up with first rate CGI and are slightly more reality-leaning than in most superhero movies – which is to say, they’re still wildly ridiculous, but set up and delivered with more control. CGI makes another priceless gift to the movie, by shrinking the 6-foot Chris Evans into a vertically challenged 90-pound weakling, and then bulking him up dramatically into the muscular Captain America. Ebert comments on this, “This is done seamlessly; I doubted there was a single shot in the movie showing Evans as he really is, but no: I learn the full-size Captain is the real Evans, bulked up.”

I enjoyed the movie. I liked the 1940s period costumes and setting, which was new compared to how a good handful of movies are set in modern time. I like the way director Joe Johnston pushed the narrative. I got the idea of a broad story, rather than the impression of a series of sensational set pieces. If Marvel is smart, it will take this and “Iron Man” as its outlines. Go see this if you haven’t, it’s in the top 10 best superhero movies ever made and another one of my favorites.

 

Now we get to “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” which premiered yesterday. This one features Rogers, as Ann Hornaday says, “Is forced into all manner of chaotic, cacophonous action.” Hornaday then goes on to say, “A baggy, at times brutal conglomeration of surprisingly deep character development and aggressively percussive action, “The Winter Soldier” is a comic-book movie only in its provenance.” In its relentless violence and dark political subtext, this just might be the most grown-up “The Avengers” episode yet.

“The Winter Soldier” finds Rogers – now completely defrosted after his cryogenic preservation after World War II – jogging around Washington, D.C. Two years have passed since the near-destruction of New York City in “The Avengers,” and he’s still trying to get up to date with the 21^st Century’s music and technology. After having a friendly conversation with fellow war veteran and runner Sam Wilson, played by Anthony Mackie, Steve is picked up by Natasha Romanoff, played by Scarlett Johansson. They’ve got an assignment, this time involving casually saving a ship and the lives of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who have been taken hostage.

Just another day’s work for the heroes of the Western World, but Steve suspects that something’s wrong with Natasha when she decides to save the ship’s computer data to her flash drive rather than fighting the Algerian terrorists on the ship. We find out that Steve has every right for that suspicion, as “The Winter Soldier” proves that, even back at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in what looks like Northern Virginia’s coolest – if vaguely fantastic – office complex, you can’t trust a soul.

One of the great strengths of the Avengers franchise has been its clever casting, and “The Winter Soldier” is no exception. Chris Evans, as Hornaday puts it, “once again brings a clean-cut, straight-shooting air of simplicity to Steve’s principled paragon, even evincing a whiff or two of prissy self-righteousness along the way.” Happily, directors Joe and Anthony Russo, working off a script done by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have decided to make “The Winter Soldier” both for Steve and Natasha, who Johansson plays continually the one to steal the movie with her martial arts moves and hot, smoking one-liners. If any director was thinking that Black Widow deserves her own movie, this film is your proof; best to get started right away.

Other great S.H.I.E.L.D. characters are on deck here, including Nick Fury and Maria Hill, played by the gorgeous Cobie Smulders (who you might remember as Robin Scherbatsky from the hit television sitcom "How I Met Your Mother"), and viewers might want to hang on for the loss of Maria’s old work partner, Clark Gregg’s still-mourned Phil Coulson. But it’s the newcomers who make the biggest impact on “The Winter Soldier,” especially the amazing Robert Redford, who plays Fury’s longtime colleague and World Security Council leader Alexander Pierce with careful charm and cool silence. Also Mackie convincingly introduces a new character, the Falcon, with appealing, unforced charisma and, as Hornaday describes, “The grace of a titanium Icarus.”

For a script that apparently was in the development stages for a few years, “The Winter Soldier” uncannily channels into anxieties having not only to do with post-9/11 arguments about security and freedom, but also Obama-era murmur strikes and Snowden-era privacy. Of course, there are moments that, in their stiff writing and ingenious staging, recall the icy-hot paranoid thrillers that Redford himself made back in the 1970s. 

But unless audiences think that “The Winter Soldier” will make the mistake of taking itself way too serious, the filmmakers make sure that for every serious moment there is at least one joke (a scene set in a bunker full of ‘70s-era computer equipment is very strong, as is a fascinatingly looking Air and Space Museum exhibit dedicated to Rogers’s career) and one-and-a-half scenes of thrashing, fist-fighting action. Hornaday does comment that, "At a running time of over two hours, “The Winter Soldier” easily could have trimmed its long-winded action set pieces, extravaganzas of promiscuous gunplay, all-engulfing fireballs and loud lashings of shattered glass that begin to feel repetitive by the film’s Big Finish, a fight that plays out with over-the-top violence that’s both cartoonish and repellently brutalizing." Now, I have to admit that I thought the action in this movie was second only to "The Avengers." It was fast-paced, edge of your seat, adrenaline rushing enjoyment, since whenever Captain America punched someone, you feel the impact. Take my advice, don't hate on the action in this movie.

For all of its overstatements, “The Winter Soldier” is excellently made well-acted, nearly setting up the next few installments with just the right tempting sense of ongoing mystery. As ever, perhaps the biggest lingering question has to do with whether S.H.I.E.L.D.’s sharp-elbowed superheroes will work together as a functional team or go their own separate ways. As “The Winter Soldier” shows, often with a punishing vengeance, just because you share a universe doesn’t necessarily mean that you play well with others.

Spoiler alert: A mid-credits scene takes place in a HYDRA lab, where Baron von Strucker, played by Thomas Kretschmann, is keeping Loki’s scepter and two prisoners: Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen). After the credits, Bucky visits Captain America’s exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum to learn about his past. Also, the very attractive Emily VanCamp is in the movie playing Agent 13.

In the end, I liked “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” better, and it belongs in the top 5 best superhero movies. I personally think that this is the second best Marvel movie ever made and it's another of my favorites. I will reveal what I think is the best later on, but I think that everyone can guess which one I'm talking about. This is a great start to the comic book movies this year. I highly recommend you go to the theaters and check this one out. You will believe me when I say this is the best movie to build up to “The Avengers: Age of Ultron.” Make sure you don't leave the theater to get more snacks from the concession stand, because this is a very fast-paced movie. Why would you even do that anyway? However, we are not done yet, for I still have to review “Guardians of the Galaxy” when that is released. So sit tight, because we still have some ways to go. Stay tuned next week when I continue “Mission: Impossible Month.”