'S.H.I.E.L.D takes the world as it is, not as we'd like it to be.'
Captain America: The
Winter Soldier continues Steve Rogers’ story as he tries to adapt to the
modern world after the events of The
Avengers. He’s now working for SHIELD and is getting the sense that Nick
Fury is hiding something from him. Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson
return in their respective roles and they are joined by Anthony Mackie and
Robert Redford among others.
The thing I look for in these post-Avengers films is what they appear to be a follow up to. For Thor: The Dark World it seemed to be a
sequel to The Avengers rather than
the original Thor. With The Winter Soldier it works fine as a
follow up to The Avengers and the
original Captain America. There are
references to The Avengers here and
there, with the presence of Nick Fury, Black Widow and SHIELD but I was
pleasantly surprised at how much the film gave similar relevance to The First Avenger. It was cleverly put
together in the sense that story included both films in its plot.
The cast is good also. Chris Evans being cast in this role
was simply a very good call from Marvel. Scarlett Johansson is again given far
more to do in this film, similar to her role in The Avengers her character is developed more here and there seems
little excuse for us not to see a Black Widow solo film in a few years’ time. Anthony
Mackie and Robert Redford are fine in their roles, however I personally didn’t
find Redford to be particularly memorable, which was strange as he’s such a
legendary actor. In my opinion the actor and character that stole the entire
film was Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. This is the first time I’ve felt like
they got Nick Fury right with the tone of the films, to me he’s great but
always seemed to be slightly out of place. Not this time though, Nick Fury is
hands down my favourite thing about this film.
The action scenes for the film felt slightly inconsistent.
The opening sequence which was meant to excite us and set up the rest of the
film felt quite poorly filmed in my opinion. They settled for shaky cam and
quick cuts which made me worry that the whole film would be filmed like this.
It felt like a scene from The Hunger
Games. The rest of the film is far better filmed, but the story does get slightly
bogged down with all the action that’s in the story. It’s also very long which
would be fine if every scene in the film felt relevant to the story, but there
is one or two long sequences that I felt they could have gone ahead and cut right
out to preserve a good run time.
All things considered the film is very good and it takes the
title character in directions you wouldn’t expect. Which is all I can really
ask for in this age where there are hundreds of comic book movies a year. I
give the film 7.5/10
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