The latest in Marvel's long line of superhero films Captain America: The Winter Solider is out today, and so are many reviews of the action flick.
Is The Winter Solider more than just your typical superhero movie, though? Check out some review excerpts from some big publications below, which range from very positive to negative. The overall reception has been quite good, but not everybody was pleased with Captain America's second solo venture.
The Globe and Mail, 3.5/4: "The presence of [Robert Redford], star of 1970s' chestnuts such as Three Days of the Condor and All the President's Men gives The Winter Soldier a fetchingly old-school texture, and more heft than you'd expect from the usual brand extension: This is the first Marvel Studios movie since the original Iron Man that really stands on its own. Not only that, but by bringing in Redford, a titan of the so-called New Hollywood, to shore up its ensemble cast, the studio shows that it hasn't forgotten about the grown-ups in the audience."
"By tweaking this sequel to play more like a cloak-and-dagger thriller than a special-effects blowout (though of course there's plenty of that, too), directors Anthony and Joe Russo have delivered an unusually satisfying and substantive superhero movie."
The Boston Globe, 3/4: "Winter Soldier delivers all the 3D CGI mayhem audiences have come to expect from the Marvel entertainment juggernaut--you can run but you can't hide from the company's domination of pop culture--but there's darkness and confusion just under its comic-book surface....It feels like more ammunition is expended than in our last three wars combined. This is what the modern marketplace calls entertainment--take it or leave it--but while the thrills are there, I wouldn't exactly call the movie fun. A kids' film it's not, and anyone who takes a child under, say, 9 or 10 is an idiot."
"But, wait, isn't Captain America supposed to appeal to children, and to the child in all of us? Isn't he meant as a pop beacon of treasured democratic ideals? Maybe, but beacons don't shine as far in today's murk....A decent guy living in indecent times, Captain America has to choose when the moment is right for derring-do--and when it might be better to derring-don't. Maybe he does represent the nation, after all."
Vulture, No Score: "Bloated and shallow as they are, comic-book-superhero pictures can occasionally surprise you. Imagine looking back on this decade, the dawn of the age of weaponized surveillance drones, and finding that the only harbingers of what was to come were the (middling) remake of RoboCopand Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Beneath the expensive, computer-generated busyness of this second Captain America installment is a bracing, old-style conspiracy thriller made extra-scary by new technology and the increasingly ugly trade-offs of a post-9/11 world....But Captain America: The Winter Soldier is still much better than it needs to be. I even found myself more tolerant of Chris Evans and his ridiculous pecs after I read that he was as frustrated by his blandness onscreen as I am."
Philadelphia Inquirer, 2.5/4: "[The Marvel Cinematic Universe] has also become, with each new title, more about marketing and profit sharing than about mythology and universe-sharing. Which brings us to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a state-of-the-art (or commerce) blunderbuss of digitally rendered aerial dogfights, kabooming fireballs, chase sequences, and battle scenes - and "serious" questions about the line where personal freedom and national security butt heads."
"The problem with Captain America: The Winter Soldier is that there's too much going on: the Marvel Universe stuff, the WikiLeaks-ish paranoia stuff, the video game-ish CG visual effects stuff, the epic John Woo-ish everybody-pointing-a-weapon-at-everybody-else face-off stuff."
