Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the sequel to Captain
America: The First Avenger, and the ninth movie in the Marvel Cinematic
Universe. Set two years after the events in The Avengers, Captain
Steve Rogers works for SHIELD and is trying to adapt to a contemporary
society.
After an action packed opening where Captain America and a
bunch of SHIELD agents rescue hostages from a ship that’s been hijacked by
Algerian pirates, Rogers discovers SHIELDS newest plan, Project Insight. It consists of three Helicarriers linked to
spy satellites and designed to preemptively eliminate threats. When he asks too many questions, he’s
targeted by SHIELD as a traitor and he’s forced to go on the run. The only people he can trust are Black Widow
(Scarlett Johanssen), Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), and his newest friend, Sam
Wilson (Anthony Mackie).
There’s a great sequence early in the movie where Rogers is
at SHIELD headquarters, alone in an elevator and a bunch of soldiers get in
with him. He quickly realizes that they’re
preparing to jump him, so he says “Before we get started, does anyone want to
get off?” What follows is a really cool
fight between Rogers and like 10 soldiers in a small elevator.
One problem with the movie is it’s 2 ½ hours long – it really
doesn’t need to be. There are a few too
many scenes of characters having the same discussion over and over. And every line spoken by Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) is stilted and lame movie-speak. Not that Redford does a bad job, he just doesn't have much to work with.
But the action scenes were pretty cool. There’s a scene where Nick Fury is ambushed
on the streets by a bunch of soldiers with machine guns, and we get to see how
resourceful and cool under pressure Fury is, as well as all the cool gadgets he
has in his car.
One of my favorite scenes is when Rogers meets Sam Wilson
for the first time. Rogers says he’s
trying to catch up on everything he missed over the last 70 years. Wilson tells him to check out a Morris Day and
the Time album, and Rogers pulls out his little notebook where he has a list of
things he missed, like Disco, Rocky
and Star Wars.
The ending is a little overblown. Just like in every big action
movie nowadays, they have to have a finale where buildings are destroyed. The ending goes on a little too long, and I got a little tired of Captain America's fights with the Winter Soldier. The first fight was great, because we see how strong he is and how Rogers may be no match for this guy. But by the end, he's fought him like five times and it gets a little too routine.
As in all Marvel movies, you have to stick around
after the credits for a couple of scenes teasing upcoming movies. I have no idea what they mean and I need to
find a comic book geek to explain it to me, but it's a fun way for the movie to say "On the next episode of The Avengers ..."
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