The thing about Captain America is he represents the fallacy of “America,” the apple-pie-eating, baseball-playing archetype that’s as outdated as a Stan Lee cameo. So all of this critical foam about how The Winter Soldier is highly political with its internet leaks and whistleblowers is just the scum on the glass after a refreshing egg cream—a leftover, a thing to wash off. Chris Evans—seriously, where are the movie stars?—is Cap, who’s been tasked to take down some terrorists with the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), which sets off a chain of events so convoluted and so requiring of backstory knowledge that a non-believer just waits for this interminable 2h18m kaboom to fade out. (Something about killing 20 million people to save seven billion?) There’s some nice casting in Robert Redford as the boss, Anthony Mackie as Falcon and Emily VanCamp (revennnnnnnge!) as a love interest, but this whole thing is an excuse to throw cool weapons around, do some double crosses and get out of stuff in the nick of time. The titular soldier, a killing machine from Cap’s past, is a single-scene explanation that does not earn the film’s resolution. Stick around for the credits so you can weep for Elizabeth Olsen’s career.
This article appears in Apr 3-9, 2014.
Honestly the single worst movie review I have ever sadly looked at. Did they pay you to actually right this? If so the Coast needs to remove you and get someone who actually examine a movie properly. You gloss over cinematography like it is a second class citizen and push pass the stars of the film faster than the cameos of Arron Taylor Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier was tailored toward the comic book audiences, so naturally Marvel fanboyism plays heavily into it’s follow. however, with references to previous Marvel tie-ins as well as the introduction of several fresh faces the film is surprisingly easy to get into if you haven’t sat down and watch everything prior to The Avengers. And even with it’s lack of what some would call an “emotional base” Winter Soldier is a great sequel to an otherwise ok film.
The tone that directors Anthony and Joe Russo took was well paced, but lacked the time needed for viewers to properly absorb what information they were getting between handfuls of popcorn and mentions of “Hey, did you catch that?” Still, the duo was able to make up for it with clever character introductions and reintroductions that show why the studio has faith in given some of these characters their own scene time in solo features in the future. If Marvel wasn’t convinced this would be a money making sequel they wouldn’t have extended star Chris Evans contract for several more features and confirmed that yet another sequel is on it’s way. If you’re looking for a good night out with your significant other and they aren’t into comic book movies it’s best to avoid this, but if you’re looking for a good night out with some friends and explosions then it’s worth the couple bucks in your pocket.
Coast do yourself a favour and look for someone who can properly review a movie with a fair bias instead of this bullshit you call a review.
You’re welcome. And if you guys and gals want, I’ll even write the next one. It’s not like I don’t have experience writing: http://nerdbastards.com/author/nickbungay/
I get paid by the comment, good or bad. Thanks for the coffee!
From the look of how many comments your ‘reviews’ tend to get, Tara, you need all the help you can get, so I’ll do you a solid and leave another one. Enjoy coffee #2.
I don’t care if you don’t like Winter Soldier. I haven’t even had the chance to see it yet. What enrages me is your piss-poor effort, feeble execution, and plain inability to critique a movie based on an unbiased sampling of its merits and shortcomings. The Coast must be hard up for whatever ‘writer’ is most desperate for an online footprint so she can brag to her fellow grocery baggers at the Wal-Mart about her powerful blogger reputation.
Can you do me a favor and link to me your one-paragraph negative E.T. ‘review’ that you knocked off in 3 minutes where you explain that you hated the movie because you prefer M&Ms to Reese’s Pieces and the impossibility of the physics of flying bicycles so I don’t have to slog through page after page of confused tedium in search of it? Thanks.
For coffee #3: hear hear, to Gabriel Ruzin’s comments. Where did Jacob Boon go? Ms. Thorne frequently finds herself “reviewing” a movie that she wishes was another movie, and the final product — rambling and turgid as the prose often is — generally discusses the movie she wished she’d seen. I would love to review “The Avengers” as if it were “Celine and Julie Go Boating,” but that doesn’t serve anyone interested in either film.
“which sets off a chain of events so convoluted and so requiring of backstory knowledge …”
Yes, it requires that you saw the previous Captain America movie. Wow, how presumptuous of the studio to expect that the viewers of a sequel would have seen the previous movie.
For coffee #5: Tara, you’re somewhat right in saying Captain America represents the phallacy of America, but not in the way you seem to think. He stands for the ideals of a country that has now become mired in paranoid security and governmental failure. This is why he’s an enjoyable and likeable character I think: you can see his confusion, can he even exist in this world as it stands now? It’s quite compelling actually, if you make a certain amount of effort to consider it. This is also one of the reasons the movie is being touted by critics as “political.” A good example of this is a really great line from the movie where Zola states “People are finally willing to sacrifice freedom for security” which speaks fairly explicitly to a certain contemporary mindset. So, in short, yes Captain America is a fun comic book movie, but how can you be “critical” of something, a film critic, if you’re just going to write one paragraph about what the movie appears to be on the surface? Even films with the most absurd of premises can objectively have merit if they have sincerity and real thought behind them.