Captain America: The Winter Soldier (April 2014)

Official Australian release date: 3/4/14. Viewed: 2/4/14.

Directors: Anthony Russo & Joe Russo

Actors: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie

Genre: Action / Adventure
Rating: M

This was so much better than I was expecting! Sure, I liked the first Captain America film, but in reality, he’s not Marvel’s strongest character – just their version of Superman, but he CAN die from a bullet. However, they were smart with this one, bringing in a strong cast to back Cap up – with familiar faces Black Widow (Johansson), Nick Fury (Jackson), Maria Hill (Smulders), Jasper Sitwell (Hernández) and Senator Stern (Shandling) all in at least one of the other films or the TV show – plus Falcon (Mackie) and Senator Pierce (Redford) as the new additions. The biggest mystery – if you haven’t read the comics – is who the Winter Soldier is, and it does a pretty good job of the reveal (no spoilers here!). The whole film flows on nicely from the ‘The First Avenger’ and ‘The Avengers’.

I was really happy with the pacing – it does a great job of reintroducing the familiar characters and bringing in the new ones and then there’s plenty of action and great set-pieces – most on a scale I didn’t believe Captain America could/would accommodate. And there’s plenty of humour too, even when the characters are in dire straits. It also works well for the first 90min or so as a pretty great mystery, with plenty of curve-balls and “did that really happen?” moments. This is really fun to watch, as you get to see more of Steve Rogers as a character, rather than Captain America, the warrior. It’s also nice to see Cap and Black Widow spending time together not fighting enemies – although I’m biased, because I would watch Scarlett Johansson in anything! But the best parts are still the action sequences – they’ve given Cap some great moves and it’s just plain fun to watch him and how they’ve filmed it.

The Stan Lee cameo/one-liner is great and links in nicely with an earlier scene and Danny Pudi from Community even gets a pretty funny scene. It’s also nice to see Fury play a more pivotal role, rather than one or two small scenes. The plot gets a little absurd near the end, but it gives Cap, Black Window and Falcon a mission and sets up a huge battle in the final 20min. There’s sure to be some repercussions from the events of this film, and I’m interested to see if any show up in ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’, or if we have to wait until ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ next year. Either way, I can’t wait! And we only have to wait two years until the next Captain America film, which is a good thing, seeing how well made this one was. As always, stay until after the end titles for a very revealing scene!

Overall: An excellent action/Superhero film. It’s fun, but also serious and engaging enough to make I interesting for the entire runtime, with some great action sequences.

Gav's Rating: 4.5 stars.