A very, very popular movie that maybe doesn’t deserve all the praise it’s gotten, but isn’t half bad either, especially for a Marvel movie.
What Works: I’m not a big Captain America fan and the first film was only so-so for me while suffering from the typical Marvel-pacing problems. However, the smartest thing this movie does is to update Captain’s rah-rah patriotism to an infinitely more complex age where America’s military industrial complex might be the real villain. To pit an old-fashioned WWII-era hero against the very military industrial complex now taking over his country is very clever and satisfying…
What Doesn’t: …Although that gets diluted when you find out that the “system” is only bad because it’s been co-opted by a stealth conspiracy of ex-Nazis. Sigh…it’s as if Marvel has no faith in taking on the current and relevant real world, so they just had to fit in some extra non-sense. “Hey, hey, hey people we’re not saying that drones and surveillance and warships are bad in and of themselves, only that they’re bad when Hydra and not Shield does it!” Desperate.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Robert Redford needs more screen time. And some sharper direction wouldn’t have hurt either. The biggest problem with Marvel movies (besides their “light” outlook) is that they don’t really have very good action in them. Yes, the action is non-stop but it’s largely indistinct and unmemorable. I can still remember the action sequences in The Dark Knight because they felt creative and emerging from the character’s themselves (The Joker’s on-fire fire truck right before a chase, the sense of fun he was having vs. Batman’s more tactile Batmobile maneuvers) while most Marvel action sequences feel by-the-numbers and there just for the sake of someone saying “I guess we better have an action scene now.”
I actually thought that this was one of the best Mavel movies all the lastest back. I want to say #2 after the first Iron Man.
Cheers
I did like it more than Spider-Man 2 or Thor 2 or really even Iron Man 2, but I still would have liked to see a beefed up role for Robert Redford, who’s so intriguing in a not-very-well-fleshed out part. Also, I can’t remember any single action sequence from this movie, and there needs to be more pop and style on that front.