Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Noodles Review

9 out of 10 Noodles

    Marvel Phase Two added another movie to its repertoire, and no doubt the best so far, by far. Iron Man 3 wasn't exactly a homerun with me, and Thor: The Dark World was good. Luckily, the next story in Captain America's life is awesome. Captain America: The First Avenger was a solid movie and a good introduction to the character, but I thought it was the weakest link of Marvel Phase One (besides Iron Man 2, but we don't talk about that movie). I loved The Avengers, as evident in my Top 5 Superhero Movies list I posted the other day; and it really grounded Cap as a great character. Though Iron Man had the spotlight of that movie and Hulk stole many scenes, they did a good job of making Captain America not only relevant, but integral. And in this sequel, we get to see how he's coping with the present world and what he does. The guy was frozen in ice for almost 70 years, so I was really interested to see how he deals with modern times, especially in his own movie. He's doing his thing, working with SHIELD and still being a badass super soldier, but he's also a boy scout and an overall good person. You can tell he's the guy that SHIELD sends on their big missions, and the movie sort of opens up with one of these. It was awesome; you see Cap running through, strategically and quickly plowing through guys with his shield. The action was straight out of a Bourne movie and it actually fit really well. And that helped to make Captain America look even more awesome.

    Chris Evans has the role of Captain America, and he owns that role just like he did in the previous two movies. He really sold Cap's personality and ideologies, which was a crucial point to this movie. You see that although he works with SHIELD, he doesn't always agree with what's going on. Scarlett Johanssen is awesome/sexy as ever as Black Widow, and her character felt a lot more relevant here. Samuel L. Jackson, as well, was able to showcase his role as Nick Fury; I thought they gave him a lot to work with here as well as feeling more important. Towards the beginning of the movie you see he and Cap don't always agree on decisions of SHIELD, and it's great to see that kind of conflict; it gives the movie layers. There was a huge political layer to this film, almost to a point where you can classify it as partly a political thriller. But it was also a spy thriller type action movie, like The Bourne Ultimatum and Mission Impossible:Ghost Protocol. And it was so cool to see that incorporated into a superhero movie, especially since it really fit in the situations. And the situations in this movie remain favourably ambiguous for a good chunk. Going into the movie, I knew sort of that Captain America was in the modern world, and there's the Winter Soldier, but that's about it. The story has a bit of a political-mystery type theme to it, which actually works well. And it keeps our interest with that ambiguity, but also through some monumental action sequences. You see car's flipping over, Cap's shield flyin' around, etc. And there was a lot of great sound editing in this movie, to the point where it actually hits you; like if a car flips over, you can feel the impact it makes, so props to that.

    There's also the Winter Soldier, who surprisingly isn't as central as I expected. He was awesome and badass in virtually ever scene he's in (especially one scene in the trailer where he shoots a cable at Falcon and pulls him down), but he sort of was mostly a roadblock for most of the time; minus what mostly comics fans would know about him until it's revealed in the film. But he's not behind the stuff that's going on; Captain America and the gang are going about their adventure to save the world, and every now and then The Winter Soldier pops up to cause problems for them. Calling this movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier is almost like if Star Wars Episode I were titled "Star Wars: Darth Maul." He's an awesome character and has some great action scenes, I like how he tied in with the story; but at the end of the day he is ultimately just a bad guy in the way wherein the bigger picture of the conflict would still be there if he weren't. The way his character is introduced may be one of the best things of this movie, because he's so ominous and it's very well done; despite him not being part of the bigger picture plot.
    The bigger picture is still very interesting. This movie is actually very realistic and grounded for a superhero film. It very much feels like a real world and you can sort of believe that this is going on, but it still retains the fun and greatness that every superhero movie should. And it has that feel to the characters that The Avengers had, wherein they're all so well realized and they have so many inside jokes between them. That's testament to the writing, which is actually so good. I do absolutely love the action in this movie, but I was also very happy to see that it didn't have to rely on that to grab our attention. The dialogue was so natural and had such a well-realized feel to it, and it began to connect us to the characters and the situations they faced. To see that in this kind of movie is so awesome, and you see this characters taken seriously. And because the characters and relationships are so well-established, the political aspect of the film, as well the morals, seem so much more important and have heightened sense of tension. That consequently makes all the action sequences seem even more suspenseful, so it's great to see how that all connects and works out for this movie. And it stays mostly consistent with that. Albeit, there is one scene that revolves around a computer intelligence and stuff like that. It's important for the exposition of the plot, but I felt it didn't connect with the feel of the rest of the movie so it was a bit off for me. However, it was a pretty short scene so not much harm done. For the rest of the movie, it's in high gear, and the tone remains consistent with tension and awesomeness.
    Do you have to see Captain America: The First Avenger to understand this movie? Well, yes and no. It does make attempts to show you what you need to know for this movie, tying characters together and whatnot. But it's a sequel, which means that I'd recommend seeing the first movie to fully understand it all. However, Captain America: The Winter Soldier does what every sequel sort of should do: it steps up the game, it capitalizes on what was good with the first movie while making the characters even more realized and relatable. There's a great deal of action, all of which is done extremely well; but also a great deal of political and moral tension. It felt like a very grounded movie, which really aided in the substantial suspense it conveyed. Of the standalone Marvel films, I think Captain America: The Winter Soldier might be my favourite, as it earns 9 out of 10 Noodles.