Movie Corner: Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America is my favorite superhero, and Chris Evans is the best one yet. That's neither here nor there though. Alvin and I anxiously awaited the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. My husband is a Marvel comic books aficionado and he regaled me with stories of how Bucky, the Winter Soldier, eventually ends up being a good guy. . .

Captain America, the First Avenger, opens with a super secret S.H.I.E.L.D. mission with Cap's new team and the Black Widow. It's exciting, lost of fighting and action, pithy lines, etc. But when the mission is complete and the unexpected dealt with, Cap finds out that the Black Widow was there for a different reason. This is the beginning of an action packed film filled with surprises, betrayal, and unending excellent fighting scenes.

Here's a little something about me, earn it and I'm intensely loyal for life. For some weird reason, I just love Captain America. So this movie, while completely awesome, had some rough moments for me.

So here's the main push, HYDRA is still alive and well in the world and has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. at it's highest levels. No one can be trusted, not even Cap's own team, Strike. Cap and the Black Widow, along with Falcon, fight through to not only reveal what is happening, but to save millions of lives.

Joss Whedon does an excellent job at all levels of filmmaking with Captain America, but he did an entirely too good of a job making the Winter Solder a really, really bad guy. In fact, Whedon did such a good job that I expect I will have an extremely difficult time accepting Bucky as anything but a super bad guy. Alvin didn't care for the lengths they went to in order to make Bucky soulless. He insisted that Bucky is Cap's sidekick and he didn't like how that part of the story unfolded.

There were times in the movie where an early bullet to the brain of multiple bad guys would have saved our team a great deal of trouble. But the story didn't call for it, although logic did. (Yes, there must be logic, even in a superhero movie.) I really had a hard time watching the Winter Soldier beat the crap out of Captain America. It just didn't set well with me. But Cap prevailed and won the day, of course.

Nonetheless, the story is amazing, matched only by the filmmaking and acting. Ironically, given my political bent, I saw a serious parallel of what is unfolding in America today.

I give Captain America a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

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Copyright 2014. All rights reserved by Candace E. Salima.