Captain America: The Winter Soldier Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Rated PG-13. Opens Friday.
The more movies Marvel produces in its so-called “cinematic universe,” the more difficult it becomes for each one to stand on its own, to tell a complete story in a unique way. With each movie feeding into the next, the need to move the never-ending über-story along often takes precedence over the smaller stories being told in each film. Although it’s populated by numerous characters from throughout the Marvel movie/TV canon and is set in the aftermath of The Avengers, sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the most effective standalone Marvel movie since the first Iron Man, and the most consistently entertaining since The Avengers.
Instead of the pulp-inspired 1940s aesthetic of the first movie, The Winter Soldier takes its inspiration from the paranoia-fueled conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s, movies like Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View, with a modern-day focus on ubiquitous government surveillance and drone warfare. Those are some serious subjects for a superhero movie, and while they do offer some timely resonance, they’re mostly window dressing for the big action set pieces. For most of the movie, though, they’re pretty effective window dressing, creating an air of genuine menace for upstanding hero Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and his allies.
The Winter Soldier wastes little time in dismantling Rogers’ stable life in the present day, making him the target of an insidious conspiracy that infests spy/military organization S.H.I.E.L.D. When he finds himself on the run from the people he thought he could trust, Rogers turns to fellow Avenger Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), aka Black Widow, as well as military veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), who turns out to have some hidden superhero talents of his own. They’re pursued by a cabal that includes a dirty politician (Robert Redford, having fun tweaking his image) and the movie’s namesake (Sebastian Stan), a mysterious assassin with ties to Rogers’ past.
Plenty of other Marvel-movie mainstays show up as well, but the filmmakers mostly manage to weave their presences into the main story, rather than just using them to tee up plot points down the road. The climax gets a little too generically explosion-y after the more low-key conspiracy material, and the large cast can be somewhat unwieldy (the Winter Soldier himself ends up a little underserved). But for the most part, The Winter Soldier does a great job of balancing its unique story (including a surprisingly large part for Black Widow) with the pressing needs of a Marvel superhero movie. Future Marvel filmmakers, take note.