Movie Review - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier was awesome, and you should totally go see it.

The Winter Soldier is the second Captain America film, and the last of the main Avengers to get a solo movie before the next Avengers film. The basic plot is that Steve Rogers is adjusting to living life in the modern age and dealing with S.H.I.E.L.D., when he eventually gets tangled up in a terrorist plot to kill millions of people all over the world and it's up to him to stop it.

I really enjoyed The Winter Soldier. Like, really enjoyed it. The opening fight sequence alone got me hooked. As much as I enjoyed the first Captain America film, it was easily the most boring of all the first wave movies. My biggest problem with the first one was one I understood was not exactly the writer's fault, but they had to tell Cap's origin story. The problem with Cap's origin story is that he did some cool stuff in World War II and then gets frozen until he's thawed out in the present day. While it's important to set-up Captain's past history and his involvement in the war and why he was so revered, it takes all the tension out of all the action scenes because you know that at the end Captain America has to be frozen in ice, then thawed out in present day and be fine. In the first film, you know nothing can happen to him while he's in the 40's because you know he has to end up perfectly intact in present day. I suspect that's a big reason they added a troop of guys for him to fight with in the first movie, because you could care about them living and dying, in a way you couldn't care about Captain.

One of the things I liked most about The Winter Soldier is that instead of trying to create tension with the possible safety of Captain America, they took a different approach and really hit home how much worse it's been on Steve Rogers emotionally to be alive. If he had died after the events of The First Avenger then he would have been the hero everyone wanted and would have gone out a hero. But in The Winter Soldier they emphasize how hard it is to deal with the fact that not only shouldn't Steve be alive, but that everything he knows from the life he knew is over and he has to start all over. They play several of these sequences for laughs, but there is still an underlying tragedy and darkness to it all. In the opening sequence we have Black Widow ask Captain America what he does in his free time and he quips that all the guys in his barbershop quarter are dead so he's got nothing to do.  While a humorous statement, it shows you something some people might forget about good ol' Cap, everyone he knew in his original life are dead or dying. The woman he had feelings for in The First Avengers is in a hospital as an old woman and has some form of Alzheimer's. Steve Rogers is all alone in this new modern world and has no one.

Things I really liked about this movie: The action, the relationship between Black Widow and Captain America and the humor. The action and stunt choreographer's deserve awards for what they accomplished in The Winter Soldier. All the action set pieces look and feel real. Also, the decision by The Russo's and company to go with as many practical effects as they could also made it all feel that more real, which is something you want from a Captain America movie I think. Iron Man has the movies with crazy technology, Thor has the movies with fantastical worlds, Captain America should have movies that ground themselves in as much reality as they can because in The Avengers, he's our everyman. Steve Rogers was just a normal guy who happened to be injected with a crazy serum that made him a perfect specimen of man. Sure, he was always brave and heroic, but the serum is what made him stand-out. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner are genius scientists/engineers, Thor is a god-like being, Black Widow and Hawkeye are extremely dangerous and expertly trained assassins. Steve is essentially a regular guy on super juice.

The relationship between Black Widow and Captain America was also a lot of fun. Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans have really good chemistry together and after seeing that they're good friends in real life and have worked on a bunch of movies together it totally makes sense. Apparently they also made up a bunch of their own dialogue for their scenes together which if true is great because it feels so natural. They get to bounce a lot of jokes off of each other and at once they both humanize Black Widow who up to this point has just been this crazy assassin woman with a fun personality and give Captain America someone to relate to, something that he is shown over and over that he is having a hard time doing in the present day.

Finally, the humor in this movie was really a delight. The Russo's come from a comedy background, including directing a ton of NBC's Community and as such it came as no surprise that they added a bunch of humor in what would otherwise be a pretty serious political thriller. One of the biggest letdowns of the first Captain America movie for me was how serious it was. There was humor, but for the majority of it the movie is played straight and that takes away from it I think. These Marvel movies work best when they have humor injected into a serious story. Thor was another good example. When Thor is on earth there's a lot of good humor about how much he stands out, but when he's in Asgard it's all totally serious. In the Thor: The Dark World there's humor in every sector of the movie and it plays a lot better. Not just because of the humor, but at least in part. The third Iron Man works way better for me than the first two (especially the second) because it's basically a buddy-cop movie re-skinned as an action/sci-fi film.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed The Winter Soldier. The story was good, the cinematography and sound design were good, the action and stunt choreography was brilliant and the acting was good all around. I was totally happy with how the film played out and I'm excited to see where Guardians of the Galaxy and Age of Ultron take us in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

I figured I'd talk very briefly about the things I didn't like about the film, which will include spoilers for the movie, don't read past this point if you haven't seen the film.

Spoilers
I thought it was a nice touch that they referenced Tony Stark a bunch in the film, and even Bruce Banner for their creations, but it was a little irritating at the end to see that they never mention Hawkeye and never call up Tony Stark. However, there are things I don't think we know, like the timeline of these films. In the first wave of films, they don't happen in chronological order and/or take place at roughly the same time. Thanks to Shane Black's love of using Christmas as a back drop for his movies, we know Iron Man 3 takes place around Christmas time, but I'm unclear of when the other movies of this wave take place. While I understand that these solo movies are supposed to be that, solo, it feels funny that after The Avengers if something big is happening like say, S.H.I.E.L.D. is secretly half Hydra and is trying to kill millions of people around the world that you reach out to Tony Stark and ask for help. The biggest problem for me in this regards was the lack of Hawkeye. We're shown in the first Thor and in The Avengers that he does a lot of big S.H.I.E.L.D. and as such he may have been off on assignment somewhere (possibly being saved for a Black Widow spinoff movie that is supposedly in production) but he's never mentioned by name in the film. The fact that Hawkeye isn't even mentioned seemed like just a waste, as we've established he is a main Avenger that is directly working for S.H.I.E.L.D. and in this movie S.H.I.E.L.D. was compromised and destroyed. I would have understood if there were filming complications due to Jeremy Renner being in other movies or not writing him into a plot corner if he's supposed to be tied into this supposed Black Widow movie, but even then they should have at least mentioned him the way they name drop Tony Stark for a bunch of his technology.

The other thing that bothered me was the possible romantic subplot between Black Widow and Captain America. If the intention was just for Captain to make a friend then to me it seemed that Scarlett and Chris' chemistry worked too well for them because throughout this movie it feels like they're making a romantic bond. One of the recurring gags of the movie is Black Widow asking Captain if he's thought about asking any girls from work out on a date, and he has a reason for each one for why they wouldn't be compatible, and by the end of this movie it feels like a woman who could easily understand and relate to Steve would be her. There is very clearly romantic tension between the two in the film, especially when they kiss, and the resulting conversation after that. To me, it felt like the writer and directors didn't want to commit to anything because Black Widow has an off-again-on-again relationship with Hawkeye in the comics, and with a Black Widow movie possibly getting off the ground they didn't want to jeopardize anything for that movie. I thought it was a nice touch that at one point we see Black Widow wearing a little arrow necklace, if they want to setup that she's romantically involved with Hawkeye. But then that goes back to my other problem, if she really cares about him, why does no one mention Hawkeye once in this film.


In reality, these are just nitpicks in what I find to be a superb movie and a fine entry into the Marvel cinematic universe. I guess my problems with the film are really just tied into the movie not wanting to interfere with any possible plot or storylines from the movies they have planned. We might find a reason for why Hawkeye or Iron Man weren't called in for this story in Age of Ultron, or why there wasn't a romantic sub-plot between Captain and Black Widow in Age of Ultron or her spin-off movie. Not everything has to be a definite and known thing in film, but both these things just felt like windows of opportunity or even logic that were sacrificed for the ability to keep everyone's options open for future movies.