Michael J. Tresca reviewed:
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
This review is from: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Amazon Instant Video)
It’s hard to make a guardian government agency these days without someone believing that, no matter how well-intentioned the individual agents are, there’s something fundamentally corrupt about it. “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” a franchise deeply rooted in American jingoism, takes this cynicism head on with its titular hero in a way that feels surprisingly modern.
Our hero, Steve Rogers AKA Captain America (Chris Evans) does what good soldiers should: he follows orders. So when he discovers that his companion Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) has an ulterior motive during a standard counter-terrorism mission, Rogers suspects something is up. This dichotomy -- Captain America forthright and public, Black Widow secretive and in the shadows – is a theme that runs throughout the film that parallels the challenge of the modern whistleblower: should we fight the creation of these privacy-invading organizations in public or release secrets illegally like Edward Snowden?
Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) prefers the latter, and he uses Black widow as a tool to get to the truth. When he gets too close, the truth attempts to rub him out in a thrilling car chase sequence with a hovercraft mode that conveniently won’t kick in when it’s needed most. With Fury presumed dead, Cap and Black Widow track down the contents of a mysterious flash drive, where they discover that when a global event threatens the authority of the world’s superpowers (the alien invasion from “The Avengers”) it reasserts itself with terrible force in a way reminiscent of fascism…the kind of fascism Captain America fought in World War II. His idealism has never felt more relevant.
And that’s what makes “The Winter Soldier” so great. What could easily be a dated concept feels fresh because the issues Captain America grapples with have changed names, countries, and titles, but are still lurking in the shadowy corners of our beloved institutions. Just don’t watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. first – the concurrent episodes give away the entire plot.
Our hero, Steve Rogers AKA Captain America (Chris Evans) does what good soldiers should: he follows orders. So when he discovers that his companion Natasha Romanoff AKA Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) has an ulterior motive during a standard counter-terrorism mission, Rogers suspects something is up. This dichotomy -- Captain America forthright and public, Black Widow secretive and in the shadows – is a theme that runs throughout the film that parallels the challenge of the modern whistleblower: should we fight the creation of these privacy-invading organizations in public or release secrets illegally like Edward Snowden?
Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) prefers the latter, and he uses Black widow as a tool to get to the truth. When he gets too close, the truth attempts to rub him out in a thrilling car chase sequence with a hovercraft mode that conveniently won’t kick in when it’s needed most. With Fury presumed dead, Cap and Black Widow track down the contents of a mysterious flash drive, where they discover that when a global event threatens the authority of the world’s superpowers (the alien invasion from “The Avengers”) it reasserts itself with terrible force in a way reminiscent of fascism…the kind of fascism Captain America fought in World War II. His idealism has never felt more relevant.
And that’s what makes “The Winter Soldier” so great. What could easily be a dated concept feels fresh because the issues Captain America grapples with have changed names, countries, and titles, but are still lurking in the shadowy corners of our beloved institutions. Just don’t watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. first – the concurrent episodes give away the entire plot.
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