Film Review: “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”

As all students of the form know, World War II contributed
enormously to the success of the comic books that flourished in the America of
the past. Characters like Blackhawk and his international squadron, the Boy
Commandos, and Wonder Woman often faced various threats from the Axis Powers;
some critics have even suggested that Superman was originally a Jewish culture
hero created to defend his people against the Nazi menace.

As his first
movie demonstrated, the protagonist of “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”
derives from the same background as his fellow superheroes. In the second of
what seems likely to become yet another cinema franchise, the Captain faces
somewhat different enemies in a more complicated world. Originally transformed
by a special serum (echtcomic book nonsense) from an undersized
pencil-necked geek to a magnificent physical specimen with superior powers,
Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), now “defrosted,” as a character puts it, works for
the security organization known as S.H.I.E.LD., under the command of Nick Fury
(Samuel L. Jackson) and Secretary Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford).

The Captain’s
opening mission in the movie involves the freeing of hostages from a hijacked
ship, which he accomplishes in a nicely choreographed ballet of violence with
the assistance of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), known as the Black
Widow, and a crew of fellow agents. Establishing his superhero credentials, he
dives from an airplane without the assistance of a parachute, an act he repeats
with variations throughout the picture.

After the
rescue of the ship and its crew Rogers returns to Washington to find that his
organization no longer deals with the clear issues of good guys versus bad
guys, but now commits itself to some confused notion of peacekeeping. From its
headquarters in a strange building called a triskelion,
S.H.I.E.L.D. intends to launch a trio of giant hovering aircraft carriers that
will obliterate trouble spots around the world in a science-fiction version of
the preemptive warfare popularized by the Bush administration, and a practice
that troubles the Captain.

Alexander
Pierce’s plan inspires the pivotal theme of the movie, a continuous examination
of the nature of trust, something of a throwback to the cultural paranoia of so
many science-fiction films of the 1950s. Nick Fury warns Captain America to
trust nobody, an admonition that governs most of the action, as loyal
S.H.I.E.L.D. agents reveal themselves as villains, and Rogers and his few
friends become something like traitors. Steve desperately attempts to discover
the truth, identify the good guys, and prevent the killing of some 20 million
people.

Despite its
vaguely intriguing central point, “Captain America” mostly continues the
current dreary cinematic practice of piling on explosions, chases, stuntwork, gunfights, and an impossibly high level of
hand-to-hand combat. Steve Rogers and his pal Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie),
a.k.a. the Falcon, swoop all over the place, performing impossible feats of
strength and agility, and beating the hell out of their adversaries. Steve
throws that famous shield like a lethal Frisbee and in the process destroys
automobiles, buildings, airplanes, and just about everything else — including
the movie itself.

Like just
about all the other superhero blockbusters and comic book flicks, “Captain
America” indicates the sorry state of filmmaking in America and the taste of
audiences all over the globe. It provides just the sort of spectacular optical,
chemical, and digital effects that movie producers, viewers, and, alas, many
reviewers mistake for cinema.

Despite the
presence of big names like Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Redford, both of whom
acquit themselves adequately, and a sultry (and redheaded) Scarlett Johansson,
the directors obviously care very little about acting, which would interfere
with the violence and fireworks anyway; the performers can pick up their huge
paychecks and forget about all that stuff about technique and movement and
internal subtexts and such that they learned in classes: nobody in the audience
cares.

The movie
grows out of a comic book, after all, a source originally aimed at mostly male
15-year-olds, or in other words, its target audience; sadly, however, a
sizeable portion of that audience these days is certainly older than that.
Think about what that means for the future of the movies.

This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2014.