CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Film Review

 

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

Somebody just turned the volume up to 11.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER (CA: TWS) just grabbed THE AVENGERS and leapfrogged right past them to catapult himself right to the top of the super-hero movie pyramid. This is a fully realized synthesis of everything that has come before in the Marvel Comics Universe and the Marvel Cinematic Universe perfectly distilled into a taut action epic that never once loses sight of the character or... the world he exists in.
The tagline that has been tossed around with this movie is a classic comics tag: “Everything changes,” only this time it is true.

The first Cap film, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER served as both an origin story for Cap but also a prologue for THE AVENGERS film. CA: TWS explores Cap’s loss of innocence in a world where the villains are not so easy to identify as it was when they wore swastikas on their sleeves. Where IRON MAN 3 served as an epilogue to THE AVENGERS, it falls to a Captain America film to be the prologue once again for an AVENGERS film (the currently filming AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON). However, CA: TWS is also a true sequel picking up on story threads from the first Cap film.

This film is securely Cap’s film, but it strongly builds up his supporting cast without ever feeling like it takes away from Cap’s story. This is an ensemble film that revolves around Steve Rogers, man out of time and the world’s greatest soldier. In the first film, set mostly in the middle of World War 2, we saw Steve, an intrinsically good man, given the strength and power to accomplish great things and not become corrupted. A natural leader, he demonstrated that rare quality of charismatic and confident command with an intuitive sense of when “just following orders” was not a proper option. As a result, he earned the trust of everyone he came into contact with. His arch nemesis, The Red Skull, functioned as the contrasting distorted mirror version of Captain America demonstrating how the same power could absolutely corrupt someone who is already bad.

 

There were other character stories in the first film including Red Skull’s top scientist in his Hydra organization, Arnim Zola. You will remember that he was eventually captured by the Americans. Steve’s best friend from childhood, Bucky Barnes, was the only soldier in Cap’s “Howling Commandos” team to lose his life in the war when he fell to his death off a speeding train in the mountains. Steve’s guilt and pain was magnified as he was there with Bucky and was unable to save him when he fell. And then there’s “Agent Peggy Carter” who was/is Steve’s first and only love but his duties in the war kept preventing them from pursuing anything more than the purest of platonic love.

 

Without spoiling the movie, let me just say that CA: TWS follows through directly on those characters and their current impact on Steve and his personal journey. It also delivers incredibly effective and important journeys for Col. Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff (The Black Widow). Somehow, the writers and directors of this film also found time to introduce 2 major characters into the mix, Sam Wilson (The Falcon) and the mysterious assassin, The Winter Soldier. By doing this they combined two different eras of the Captain America comic books, the 1970s and the 2000s, into something new and original that knocked my socks off.

As a child, my introduction to the character of Captain America was during the phase in which the title of the book was actually “Captain America and The Falcon.” So I have always had a soft spot in my heart for the character of Sam Wilson. I was both excited to learn they were introducing him into the film but I was also slightly hesitant because I was afraid his character would bear little resemblance to the character as I remembered him. I should not have worried. The casting of the roundly likeable and earnestly charismatic Anthony Mackie is what sells it. They changed up a little bit of Sam’s personal background, but for the most part, this is the guy I already knew. It was like my first experience watching Chris Evans as Cap. I felt that I already knew him. It wasn’t someone performing, this was actually the Captain America I “knew” from my childhood. Sam is also a good man. He and Steve bond instantly with mutual respect and it completely makes sense that they are drawn together through the events of the film brought about by the appearance of The Winter Soldier in an incredible action sequence in Washington D.C.

 

Actually there are a couple of incredible car-based action sequences that are in and of themselves worth the price of admission. The action in this movie is ramped up, violent, and impressive. It weaves in and out of mass destruction-type action and personal combat expertly – very “BOURNE-like” in that way.

 

Part of why it is fitting to include The Falcon in this story is that the ‘70s era of Captain America comics, following the Watergate controversy and the fall of President Nixon, dealt with a loss of innocence in Steve as he had to face the inroads of corrupt government. This film deals solidly with issues of over-reaching government and the politics of the day – especially how far should the people allow their governments to go under the guise of “protecting” them? The film also solidly addresses the importance of the free flow of information. The themes explored in CA: TWS are strongly relevant and I believe that it will only increase in relevance as time passes.

 

Oh yeah, I almost forgot something. For the hardcore Cap fans who maybe thought there was no way to ever incorporate “Batroc ze Leaper” (a mostly absurd French stereotype villain whose super-power is super-jumping) into the more grounded Cinematic Universe, well… worry no more.

 Bottom line is….GO SEE THIS MOVIE!

★★★★★ out of ★★★★★

#captainamericathewintersoldier #wintersoldier #captainamerica

 

 

HER Review

An incredibly thought-provoking and emotional film.  This is true science-fiction using the concept of the advent of the Artificially Intelligent Operating System in a near-future world as a storytelling device to speak to the human condition as it is right now.  This is a true zeitgeist film
The story, and Joachim Phoenix's performance especially, delve deeply into the heartache and emotional frustration of the introverted intuitive in a world that just doesn't much accommodate or often recognize the value in.  Scarlett Johansson, likewise, delivers a seductively charming voice-only performance as "Samantha" the Operating System that mutually falls in love with Phoenix's "Theodore".

What was so interesting to me to watch and experience (I felt a lot of kinship--for good or bad--with Theodore) was how when Samantha first wakes up, the connection between the 2 is eerily instant.  As the film progresses, we see the two of them go through all the phases of relationship but also we see them growing emotionally and spiritually.  At the start he is farther along and is drawing her along with him but by the end she outpaces his self-actualization (because she is not bound by time and space and past and physicality) and she becomes the catalyst for his own painful, but necessary growth. 

While this all plays out, the metaphor for modern-day online relationships is very clear.  The near-instant intimacy and 24-hour immediacy and availability of those we connect with through the virtual world is mirrored in the very real love and relationship between Theodore and Samantha.  However, just as most virtual intimacies will stay virtual, Theodore and Samantha must always be that way without even the faint hope of eventually being together in the physical world.

As they interact and deepen their bonding and dependency upon each other, the filmmaker wisely brings home the difference between the purity of the virtual only relationship by letting us see Theodore interacting with his ex-wife and finally signing those divorce papers he's been avoiding for over a year.

The film does not ever treat Theodore and Samantha's relationship (nor do his close friends) as anything less than real, but it demonstrates clearly the wider societal deteriorations that are happening as people disappear more and more into their own heads by way of the virtual world.
It's a sobering movie.  It should give us all cause for reflection and some self-evaluation.  One of the profound visual moments for me was a scene where Theodore is walking through a crowded area outside and he's talking to Samantha as if she is walking right there with him.  And as he's doing this, you notice that everyone around him is doing the exact same thing...but absolutely nobody is talking to anyone who is actually there.

There's another moment where they are in a serious discussion and he keeps asking her whether she's talking to anyone else at the same time.  Any of us in relationships who have been carrying on a conversation with someone next to us while texting a conversation with one or more other people, knows the frustration the other person expresses oftentimes at that sense that he or she is not being given the respect of attention.  Again, a sobering moment for all of us, I'm sure.

The deepest theme of the movie is just simply about expanding our view of love and to not box it into our own, or society's, preconceived notions.  We all would do well to recognize that each and every one of us have varying distinctions of what we understand love to mean and to be to us and it is not, and should not, be something anyone else should dictate.

I really liked the line from Amy Adams' character who said to Theodore that "falling in love is societally approved insanity."

Quite true.

★★★★1/2

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