Captain America: The Winter Soldier : Movie Review


How do two directors whose most notable previous feature film is 2006's "You, Me and Dupree" get the job of handling one of Marvel Studios' biggest properties? It sounds random on paper, but brothers Anthony Russo and Joe Russo prove they are worthy by significantly bettering 2011's toothless "Captain America: The First Avenger" with more confident, forward-thinking sequel "Captain America: The Winter Soldier." The 95-lb. WWII enlistee who transformed via scientific experiment into a larger, stronger, bulkier embodiment of himself before battling the Nazi-inspired HYDRA organization and getting zapped to modern times by way of a cryogenic freeze, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is still struggling to catch up to a world that kept evolving without him. Instead of playing this fish-out-of-water scenario for broad laughs, screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (2013's "Thor: The Dark World") sympathetically approach it from a place of bittersweet nostalgia. Thus, when Steve visits the Captain America exhibit at The Smithsonian and watches a short educational film on himself from an era that is no longer, one can sense the loss in his heart. A scene shortly after this where he visits the woman he once loved, the now-elderly Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), is delicately handled yet poignant in its greater implications. If Steve is now living in 2014, however, the tautly designed conspiracy he finds himself in is right out of a 1970s paranoid thriller.

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Author : Dustin Putman