Captain America: The Winter Soldier | Little White Lies

Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The Win­ter Soldier

28 May 2014 / Released: 28 Mar 2014

Captain America in a military uniform, standing amidst debris and wreckage.
Captain America in a military uniform, standing amidst debris and wreckage.
4

Anticipation.

The Captain hasn’t put a foot wrong yet.

3

Enjoyment.

Slick, systematic and à la mode — are these really qualities we want from a Captain America movie?

2

In Retrospect.

Hopefully Joss Whedon’s Avengers sequel can give Cap a shot of much needed spunk.

Chris Evans’ wel­come return to the super­hero fold can’t save this sequel from feel­ing like an awk­ward fran­chise mid-point.

When direc­tor Joe John­ston was hand­ed the reins to Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: The First Avenger fan reac­tion was swift, fierce and over­whelm­ing­ly neg­a­tive. At one end of the scale were those who were pulling their hair out in shock and alarm at a per­ceived sec­ond-tier jour­ney­man direc­tor being entrust­ed with so icon­ic, beloved and piv­otal a com­ic book char­ac­ter. At the oth­er were there were those who felt that he at least rep­re­sent­ed a fair­ly safe pair of hands. The spec­trum of opin­ion didn’t actu­al­ly extend to any­one who was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed by the prospect.

As it turns out, John­son was the per­fect fit for a film that many feel is the best Mar­vel effort to date. A back­room appren­tice­ship under Lucas and Spiel­berg allied to a sol­id old school approach meant that he was per­fect­ly suit­ed to the require­ments a rous­ing, WWII boy’s own adven­ture. Inven­tive, know­ing and cask-aged in peri­od detail, The First Avenger was a can­ni­ly framed and idio­syn­crat­i­cal­ly charm­ing guns-a-blaz­ing effects-heavy blockbuster.

The Win­ter Sol­dier sim­ply piss­es most of that away.

Instead we’re offered a mod­ern, effi­cient but large­ly anony­mous high-end action film that would work just as well if the good Cap­tain was excised whole­sale from pro­ceed­ings and replaced by John McCLane or any oth­er inde­struc­tible two-fist­ed movie quip­ster. Explod­ing SUVs flip over length­wise, SWAT teams kick down doors, the high­er-ups are all slip­pery bas­tards and everybody’s hot under the col­lar for a miss­ing hard dri­ve. Add all that chewed meat to a plot revolv­ing around Home­land Secu­ri­ty con­cerns and the giant heli-car­ri­ers that fea­tured heav­i­ly in The Avengers and you’re left with a film that is not only short on orig­i­nal ideas but feels more than a few years out of date.

A store-bought plot sends aw-shucks super-sol­dier Cap­tain Amer­i­ca (Chris Evans) and fick­le death-vix­en Black Wid­ow (Scar­lett Johans­son) under­cov­er and off the grid as they attempt to iden­ti­fy the can­cer that’s eat­ing at the heart of SHIELD. Stand­ing in their way is the Win­ter Sol­dier, a mys­te­ri­ous­ly long-haired mega-thug with a met­al arm and a bad atti­tude who may or may not have pri­or form with the Cap.

Not only is the sto­ry­line dull, it also relies heav­i­ly on our knowl­edge of events form the first film whilst spend­ing an awful lot of time spin­ning threads that will be woven into the third. All of which makes The Win­ter Sol­dier feel like lit­tle more than a fran­chise stag­ing post, or as if the audi­ence is being kept in a hold­ing pat­tern above an air­port that has yet to be built. Sly hints toward the plot of the next install­ment and cutesy/​tedious end-cred­its stingers are all well and good, but they’re no sub­sti­tute for round­ed storytelling.

That isn’t to say what remains isn’t enjoy­able, just that it doesn’t much feel like a Cap­tain Amer­i­ca movie. Direc­tors Antho­ny and Joe Rus­so cut their teeth on such urbane, snip­py TV sit­coms as Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment and Com­mu­ni­ty and the film begins bright­ly, with some inspired com­e­dy con­cern­ing the Cap’s grow­ing laun­dry list of post-WWII must-see cul­tur­al arte­facts and baf­fling culi­nary inno­va­tions. But how­ev­er wel­come it is, wry humour isn’t quite enough to car­ry the day.

The Rus­sos bring some fresh tricks and kicks to the fight scenes and have a good eye for fram­ing, but over­all the action is pre­dom­i­nant­ly undis­tin­guished. And when a char­ac­ter ­­— not once, but twice — weasels their way out of a last-gasp no-win hell’s ditch predica­ment by cut­ting a hole in the floor with a laser-pow­ered screw­driv­er thing, it’s clear that inven­tive set-piece bom­bast is in short supply.

Bring­ing Cap­tain Amer­i­ca into the mod­ern world was always going to present a few prob­lems, but as his exquis­ite turn in Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assem­ble proved, it’s both pos­si­ble and cred­i­ble to chan­nel his apple pie charms into a slick con­tem­po block­buster. But The Win­ter Soldier’s attempts to inte­grate the Cap into the 21st cen­tu­ry has smoothed off too many of his old world edges. In doing so, the char­ac­ter is bland­ed out into a karate-chop­ping, park­our-dash­ing action man who very occa­sion­al­ly slips into a red-and-blue onesie.

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