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Tuesday, April 8, 2014

MOVIE REVIEW Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Cultural References, With Steel & Chrome Ass-Kickings

Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America and Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in "Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier".  Marvel
       
by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW                                           
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Joe Russo and Anthony Russo's "Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier", a mouthful to say and a mouthful to see, delights in packing cultural film references from decades past to entertain.  These references however, are more for Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a Rip Van Winkle superhuman preserved to fight on another day and for eternity, in the name of justice.  Two years ago, the inaugural "Captain America" film played dull, aweless fiddle strokes, bogged down in tedium.  Now, "Winter Soldier" has a noisy pulse and full of quips, wit and fine comic timing.

Steve Rogers may as well be Steve Austin.  "On your left!" is his early mantra, as his bullet-speeding Superman jogging pace blisters any running mate in the shadow of Pennsylvania Avenue.  Steve's mantra is literally a running joke.  No joke however, are the internal enemies he has to confront when S.H.I.E.L.D, the government spy agency run by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), has been compromised.  A friend from Steve's past (Sebastian Stan) reappears, further complicating matters.  A shield is only as strong as the fortress it protects, and when cracks start to form from within, the infrastructure behind is pure façade.  Themes of trust, security and brotherhood run throughout "Winter Soldier".  Some of those are only as good as an instant.

The plot and story of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is a backdrop for the constant dynamic, energetic fervor that feeds the Russo Brothers action-adventure.  Each scene is slickly designed for maximum entertainment and ferocious, pulse-pounding action.  Steels screeches.  Metal mangles.  Chrome crunches throughout as its own discrete soundtrack as bodies take major smash hits.  It's as if bodies are being smashed for percussion purposes for the film's rhythmic beat-down orchestra of noise. 

The fascism of full metal jackets, jackbooted personnel and artillery musculature are never far away, nor are the wisecracks of movies past.  Even the movie references suggest or evoke memories of guns (not necessarily the Navarone kind), war or its machinery.  "Winter Soldier" steps back in time too, with a few old-fashioned ways to broadcast bad guy messaging.  As I watched the film I felt like I was watching the original "Austin Powers" minus the campy and overtly comedic existence it lived for.  (As a Marvel film, "Winter Soldier" has an obligatory Stan Lee cameo, always a winning note in the films.  Mr. Lee is as cheeky and regular presence in his films as Alfred Hitchcock was in his own, and it's a cameo you always wait for.)

Robert Redford has a small but key role as industry man Alexander Pierce, doing well in the role.  His scenes with Mr. Jackson, whose Nick Fury doesn't even seem to trust himself much less anyone else, have an underlying tension.  Often each character is occasionally in a world of their own.  "Winter Soldier" provides them each a stage to operate individually and collectively, including Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), who does more here to kick behind and take names than she did in "The Avengers".  When will she have a film trained solely on her superheroine?

"Winter Soldier" does most if not everything very well but its lone weakness lies in its one-on-one episodes where love, friendship and feelings look corny and caricatured, if not downright exhausted.  Those emotional moments have an underlying sentiment that feels false and uncomfortable, and that's not a big surprise considering that the film's hardware is carved out of iron and granite.  The Russos have crafted a thrilling, crowd-pleasing film that leaves a smile of admiration and satisfaction on your face.

Also with: Frank Grillo, Cobie Smulders, Maximiliano Hernandez, Toby Jones, Jenny Agutter.

"Marvel's Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for intense sequences of violence, gunplay and action throughout.  The film's running time is two hours and 12 minutes.
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