Gargantuan budgets and (doubtless) equally vast box-office receipts aside, there's little remarkable about this handsomely mounted latest addition to Marvel's ongoing multi-stranded film franchise. Having been revived from deep freeze and forced to adapt to the modern world, Chris Evans's pumped-up walking anachronism finds his loyalties divided by the prospect of a skybound 'defence' system that can predict and eliminate crimes before they happen. Or can it?
'This isn't freedom,' the square-jawed Captain tells SHIELD's compromised director Nick Fury ( Samuel L Jackson), 'it's fear!' Enter Robert Redford, playing against type as a creepy suit in pursuit of absolute power, injecting an element of good old 70s paranoia into this stereoscopic 21st-century romp.
While corrupt officialdom and surveillance anxiety may suggest an intelligently subversive blockbuster, the Russo brothers (who won an Emmy for the pilot episode of Arrested Development) settle too often for over-extended interludes of generic running, punching, throwing, falling, and just generally blowing everything up. Scarlett Johansson does more back-flipping high kicks interspersed with sassy quips as Black Widow, while Toby Jones has fun again as an escapee from Iron Sky, but the titular steel-armed soldier somehow gets lost amid the morass of thumbnail sketches - even at an unwieldy 136 minutes, this manages to skimp on character development. Those in search of eye-popping, cliff-hanging spectacle won't be disappointed, but on a personal level (and post credits sequences aside) Joss Whedon this ain't.
Post By http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/mar/30/captain-america-winter-soldier-review-eye-popping-marvel
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