Avengers Assemble: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

“We are both men out of time.”

Filmology Rating: 3.5 out of 4

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the second Cap film and introduced the world to the Russo Brothers. This was also written by the "Infinity War" writers and is about internal affairs and Cap needs to go off-the-grid for the movie to happen.

Rewatching this film helped solidify that this is my favorite Marvel film and for many reasons. One of which being the tone because there aren't any annoying smart asses in this film that say dumb jokes. The tone is similar to the Bourne series, which this film seems to be heavily inspired by.

The action scenes are very well shot. There is lots shaky-cam and usually that is bad, but like Paul Greengrass, the Russos know how to do shaky-cam correctly. It's used to build tension in action scenes to create a restless feeling and one of the best things we notice about Captain America in this is that he is, essentially, Jason Bourne with super strength. Or Batman without the technology and cape. He's flipping around and he throws a knife into a guy's hand in his first action scene. How awesome.

There are just so many, what I call, "Fuck yeah!" moments in this. Like Cap throwing the knife into the guy's hand, the elevator scene, the Nick Furry car chase, Cap and Bucky's knife fight. There are just so many little moments in this that are memorable.

This is a film that also has no time wasted. Every scene has a purpose. Even the action scenes are a way of telling a story or pushing the plot along. Like at the end, it isn't just a mindless action scene where things blow up, it's actually a stage for Cap and Bucky to have an emotional confrontation. When the action scenes in your action film serve an actual purpose, you're doing something right.

This film also has, what people like to call, "plot holes." For example: "How did they get Falcon's gear? How did they get those three chips for the end action scene? How did Black Widow get the council women disguise?" Guess what, it doesn't matter. Chris Nolan films are littered with things like that and if those little things were explained in the film, would it really make the film better? A good writer knows when to cut the fat.

What makes Captain America so interesting in this film is that he is still adjusting to the world around him. He came from a time where it was simply good and evil/black vs white; Nazis and the good guys. But he's put in a time where he doesn't know who to trust, what to do about his best friend who is his enemy, and if he's worth saving.

One person he learns to trust is Black Widow who is given a lot more to do in this film. She is Cap's sidekick throughout, as well as Falcon, and there is a wonderful buildup to the reveal of the Winter Soldier. Natasha builds up the fact that he is a mysterious figure and it's shown how menacing the Winter Soldier is when she is running for her life, panicking, because she's scared of Bucky. We've never seen her scared before, so it adds a lot to the presence of Bucky along with the wonderful screeching affect that is accompanied whenever he shows up.

Robert Redford plays the evil man with evil motivation in this film when we learn that SHIELD is really Hydra. And shockingly, an actor like Robert Redford is in this, but he is also given a sufficient enough motivation to where you can see his point-of-view as he talks to the Jedi Council through holograms throughout the film.

When we learn that SHIELD is Hydra, it is a giant exposition dump from the evil scientist, computer man. Usually I talk negatively about exposition, but it was needed in this scene and it was from a computer monitor. It was so goofy that I sort of liked it. It wasn't just shot-reverse-shot, someone explaining.
There is a scene where Cap and Natasha are driving and she says, "Where did you learn to steal a car?" And I believe the writers were referencing the 1990 Captain America film where Cap infamously stole people's vehicles.

Before this film came out, there was talk of more Marvel fatigue and this film did surprise people, however, many were still skeptical after this film. It wasn't until the next Marvel film where people gave into the craze...

Rating: See It

-Nolan