Marvel Cinematic Universe: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

 In eager anticipation of Marvel Studios' AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, I'm re-watching every entry in the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" (MCU) thus far, from IRON MAN to GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, and then sharing my views on each one as a film and within the context of the MCU and movie landscape.  At the end of each essay is a list of "Easter eggs" that connect the pertinent film to other films in the wider MCU, and a "Top 5" of the best five parts (a scene, concept, actor, character, etc.) in each movie.  The installment with the most immediate and far-reaching implications on the MCU prior to AGE OF ULTRON is Captain America's triumphant return in THE WINTER SOLDIER, a film that shifts the task of anchoring the MCU between Avengers films from Iron Man to Captain America, who emerges as a new headliner for Marvel movies.  [Please note, this review contains spoilers for CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER, and speculative connections to future Marvel releases].

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
Released 4 April 2014
Directed by Anthony Russo & Joe Russo
Starring: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Emily VanCamp, Maximiliano Hernandez, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Gary Shandling
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, gunplay and action throughout.
136 minutes 
Merit: 3.5/4
A 20th-century man still struggling to adjust to a 21st-century world, Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, finds his 1940s idealism doesn't mesh with the moral complexities and subtleties of a post-9/11 world.  When S.H.I.E.L.D., the organization that Rogers, and allies Nick Fury and Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, are agents of, reveals itself to be the enemy they thought they were fighting, Captain America and his allies become fugitives.  Their enemies have a powerful ally though, one that Rogers is reluctant to fight, as the "Winter Soldier" is one of the last links to the world he used to know.

Except for a brief prologue and epilogue, Captain America's first outing in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER was entirely set within the 1940s.  We got to see some of his adjusting to the 21st century in MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, but he was only one part of a six-hero team.  CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER puts him back in the lead and two years after the events in THE AVENGERS, dealing with the complexities of a post-9/11 (read: post-Battle of New York) world, as it were.
Still struggling to catch up on all the history and culture that's passed during his decades frozen in the Arctic, Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) now lives in Washington D.C. as an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., working regularly with Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and having recently befriended a fellow veteran, former USAF pararescueman Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie).  But Rogers finds the often shady "peacekeeping" and intelligence-gathering techniques of his employers difficult to accommodate, and clashes with Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) over the morality of his preemptive measures.  But even Fury is beginning to discover that S.H.I.E.L.D. is not everything it seems.

The "Winter Soldier" of the title is James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Cap's childhood friend who was thought killed in action when they captured Dr. Zola in WWII, now revealed to be not only living, but a dark shadow of Captain America himself.  As the mysterious Winter Soldier, Barnes has been experimented on and had his memory wiped regularly via electric shocks for the almost 70 past years and used as an untraceable master assassin by Cap's WWII-era nemesis organization, H.Y.D.R.A., which has endured in secret for several decades.
A common complaint toward the MCU is that it treats movie storytelling like television, forcing each installment to maintain the status quo, so there can be no lasting consequences.  There is something to that.  In addition to just not finding it particularly interesting, I ignore the ABC television spinoff Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. because as far as I'm concerned, Agent Coulson's tour of duty was ended by Loki's spear in THE AVENGERS, and I'm not interested in "Life Model Decoys" or faked deaths (not to mention, although I hear it's improved post-THE WINTER SOLDIER, the first episodes were so boring).  Apparently the show was greatly improved by the corresponding events of THE WINTER SOLDIER, but I don't see myself powering through all the previous episodes.  THE WINTER SOLDIER nullifies a couple of major deaths, although neither is surprising, but in contrast, it also breaks down S.H.I.E.L.D. itself, a major construct of the MCU up until now.  Armin Zola (Toby Jones), who appeared in THE FIRST AVENGER as a H.Y.D.R.A. scientist, but is best known in the comics as essentially a frankly silly-looking giant face on a walking TV set, returns in THE WINTER SOLDIER, cleverly redesigned as a more cinematically appropriate preserved consciousness within an archaic supercomputer.  Zola reveals that S.H.I.E.L.D. is inherently corrupt, evolved from H.Y.D.R.A. at the start, despite the noble of efforts of the unwitting.

In today's world where government intelligence agencies perform extensive surveillance and data mining operations practically unchecked, governments carry out remote drone strikes and embrace a national defense strategy based on preemptive measures, THE WINTER SOLDIER pits Captain America's early 20th century values against the modern fear-based American security state.  Nick Fury recounts a story to Cap about his grandfather, who worked as an elevator operator in they city, and loved but didn't trust people, so when anyone asked to see what was in the paper bag where he carried his tips, he'd show them the .22 he also kept in the bag.  It's like the story you've probably seen shared on social networking, about the woman who is pulled over by a police officer who notices a gun in her glove box and asks her what she's so afraid of.  "Absolutely nothing," the woman replies, and then all the gun nuts laugh knowingly because they're all part of the same club.  Please.  The story betrays exactly the truth that it's meant to refute, an adult's way of assuring themselves that there's no monsters under the bed, but the only reason for such an assurance is to relieve such an obvious anxiety.  There are things to fear, like people so scared that they put everyone else at risk to put a figurative bandage on their deep-seeded terror of an uncertain world.  MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS started pulling the curtain back on S.H.I.E.L.D., the ominous "peacekeeping organization" that played at maintaining global security, but their fear-based tactics involved weaponizing extra-terrestrial powers like the Tesseract, making nuclear deterrents which, as Tony Stark puts so succinctly, "always calms everything down," and eventually attempting to nuke New York.  THE WINTER SOLDIER blows the lid off this agency with a Cold War arms race philosophy of protection, and makes that ultimate accusation, comparing them to the Nazis (H.Y.D.R.A., basically the same thing).
THE WINTER SOLDIER has some of the best action of the whole MCU so far, with the directing team of brothers Joe Russo and Anthony Russo lowering the CG quotient (up until the grand finale anyway) for more martial arts and bullets.  The highlight is the assassination attempt on Nick Fury that leaves his car with the appearance of a colander and then flips it in an impossibly cool slow-motion explosion, but I'm also very fond of the sequence in which Cap, Black Widow and an assortment of S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers liberate hostages on a pirate-captured vessel, including a Mortal Kombat-style fight between Cap and comics villain "Batroc the Leaper" (portrayed by MMA fighter Georges St-Pierre).  Some people think that fight is a little cheesy, but some people should shut up, because it's really awesome.  Honestly though, I love all the action in this movie, even the big, bombastic climax with the Marvel standard of something big (in this case, multiple Helicarriers) crashing down from the sky.

The Russo brothers, taking the director's reins from THE FIRST AVENGER's Joe Johnston, were previously unestablished as blockbuster directors, their best known theatrically released film before being the critically-maligned Owen Wilson-starring 2006 comedy YOU, ME AND DUPREE.  They were best known for their work in television, having directed episodes of cult comedy series Arrested Development and Community, the latter which they also executive produced (Danny Pudi, who plays autistic pop culture genius Abed Nadir on Community makes a brief cameo in THE WINTER SOLDIER as "Com Tech #1").  With auteur filmmakers finding it difficult to function within the MCU, which necessitates a certain continuity and consistent vision throughout multiple film series, the Russo brothers, with their background in television, are arguably well-suited to the Marvel template, but it's interesting that their comedy doesn't play a stronger part in THE WINTER SOLDIER.  It has moments of levity, but it's also the most straight-faced of the installments in Phase 2 so far, drawing on the Russo brother's pop culture knowledge for dramatic influence more often than humor.  A frequently cited source of inspiration for the tone of THE WINTER SOLDIER is the Sydney Pollack-directed 1975 film THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, and other political paranoid thrillers of the post-Watergate era, and the three-tier climactic action draws parallels to the original Star Wars trilogy grand finale, THE RETURN OF THE JEDI.  Robert Redford, the star of THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, appears in THE WINTER SOLDIER as S.H.I.E.L.D. leader Alexander Pierce, ultimately revealed to be the big bad himself, operating S.H.I.E.L.D. as a front for H.Y.D.R.A.  Redford mostly keeps a low profile these days, but cited an interest in seeing how these big blockbuster adaptations of "cartoon characters" worked, and although it's interesting to see the fair-haired actor with a prolific acting career as a the good guy taking on a villain, it's admittedly not even approaching the level of Henry Fonda in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, an inspiration cited by the Russos.
THE WINTER SOLDIER shows a real range for the Russos though, with exciting action, paranoid thrills and emotional heft, on top of their well-established comedy, and they definitely clicked with Marvel.  In fact, they're already working on the next Captain America installment, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR, due out in May 2016, and were recently announced to direct the Phase 3 grand finale in two parts, AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR PART 1 and PART 2, which assuming they carry through, makes them the longest-lasting directors in the MCU (Jon Favreau with IRON MAN and IRON MAN 2, and Joss Whedon with MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS and AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, being the only others to have directed multiple installments, with James Gunn also returning soon to make GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2).  If their work on THE WINTER SOLDIER is any indication though, I suspect the MCU still has plenty of life left in it, even after Joss Whedon passes the torch.

Easter Eggs to Look For:

• Reference to MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS: When showing Project Insight to Captain America, Nick Fury addresses the Helicarrier modifications including the repulsor jets in place of turbines, made with the help of Tony Stark, "once he'd gotten a closer look at our turbines", referring to attack on the Helicarrier in THE AVENGERS, when Iron Man had to repair the damaged turbine with Cap's assistance.
• Reference to MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS and Foreshadowing to AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: On a monitor displaying Project Insight targets is an image of the modified Stark Tower from THE AVENGERS, now Avengers Tower as it will appear in AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON.
• Reference to IRON MAN: Sam Wilson's "Falcon" gear bears the Stark Industries logo, and Alexander Pierce requests that Nick Fury arrange a visitation by Iron Man to his niece's birthday party.
• Reference to MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS; Possible Foreshadowing to AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON or Other Installments: Black Widow wears a necklace with an arrow ornament, likely referring to her relationship with Agent Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye (portrayed in the MCU by Jeremy Renner), depicted as friendship in THE AVENGERS, but possibly more romantically involved in future films.
• Reference to IRON MAN 2: The obnoxious and antagonistic Senator Stern, portrayed by comedian Garry Shandling, returns in a cameo that reveals him to be member of H.Y.D.R.A. when he whispers "Hail H.Y.D.R.A." to S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Jasper Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernandez).
• Possible Foreshadowing to AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON, CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and Other Installments: Agent 13, aka Sharon (Emily VanCamp), Cap's neighbor, is actually Sharon Carter, niece of Cap's WWII-era love interest Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), and known as a major love interest in the comics and expected to return in future films.
• Possible Foreshadowing to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR or Other Installments: Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo), a member of Cap's strike team and later antagonist, is severly injured when the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters are destroyed but is seen being carried away in a stretcher, implying a return as major Captain America super villain "Crossbones".
• Foreshadowing to AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON: The mid-credits sting directed by Joss Whedon cryptically introduces AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON characters Baron Wolfgang von Strucker (Thomas Kretschmann), a H.Y.D.R.A. scientist, and the "twins", Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Quicksilver (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who have been experimented on with Loki's spear from MARVEL'S THE AVENGERS, setting up events for AGE OF ULTRON.
• Foreshadowing to CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR or Other Installments: The post-credits sting reveals Bucky Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, at the Smithsonian, rediscovering himself, implying a return in future installments.
• Foreshadowing to DOCTOR STRANGE and Reference to THE INCREDIBLE HULK: Agent Sitwell, spilling the beans on Project Insight, H.Y.D.R.A.'s plan to kill anyone who poses a present or future threat, refers to "Bruce Banner", aka the Hulk, and "Stephen Strange", aka Doctor Strange, who will be played by Benedict Cumberbatch in DOCTOR STRANGE, directed by Scott Derrickson, scheduled for release November 4, 2016.

Top 5 of CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 

1.  Nick Fury's Bullet-Riddled Car Chase- Surrounded by suspicious-looking cars at a traffic light, Nick Fury suddenly finds his SUV being pelted by bullets, and when those don't work, the bad guys start assailing his car window with a pneumatic battering ram, all while his vehicle's A.I. system provides sardonic humor.  It's a brutal, relatively grounded but nonetheless spectacular action scene polished off with a much too cool slow motion explosion as the Winter Soldier flips Fury's SUV with an explosive device and steps out of the way of the fiery blast.
2. Cap Takes Down the Mercenaries- Boarding a S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel commandeered by Batroc and his mercenaries, Cap wallops a few with his shield, throws some off the boat, pins a guy's hand against a wall with a knife and takes down Batroc Mortal Kombat-style.  It's exciting, kinetic practical stunts, and Cap is a soldier who straight kills the bad guys.  He may be a square most of the time, but in battle, he's badass.
3. Zola Resurrected- In an old Army building, Cap and Black Widow discover an outdated supercomputer containing the preserved consciousness of H.Y.D.R.A. scientist Armin Zola, whose face appears as a grainy image on a 1980s-era monitor, revealing his machinations to continue H.Y.D.R.A.'s vision in the 21st century to stall Cap from escaping a coming air strike.  It's an effective way of translating what was a silly cartoon character to the conspiracy-thriller world of THE WINTER SOLDIER, and has a creepily fun sense of heightened reality.
4. The Black Widow- For those who think Captain America is just too much of a square, there's Scarlett Johansson's S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Natasha Romanoff, aka "Black Widow", a character who had a lackluster introduction in IRON MAN 2, was greatly enhanced by Joss Whedon's script in THE AVENGERS, and continues as one of the MCU's most interesting and fun characters in THE WINTER SOLDIER, where her shadier ethics counteract the all-American goodness of Cap, while the film takes on an unusual sort of buddy movie quality.
5. Elevator Fight- One by one, the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents planning to detain Captain America step into the elevator, surrounding him, until he takes them down on his own terms.  A particularly badass moment for Cap, and the magnetic handcuffs they try to pin him down with are a cool concept.

Images via Marvel Studios