Featured
Film Review: Captain America ‘The Winter Soldier’.
/ March 26, 2014
Rating: TBC
Release Date: April 3rd, 2014.
I don’t think it’ll ever be said of Marvel that they suffer from ‘sequel-itis’.
Set 2 years after The Avengers, in Captain America: The Winter Solider, Steve Rogers is back as an ex-servicemen keen to continue fighting for his country, but unsure of whether or not he can trust them, and whether or not his 19th century value system has a place in this 21st century world.
Endowed with some new Ninja-like fight skills, his latest mission for S.H.I.E.L.D. sees him battling the Soviet agent known as ‘The Winter Solider’, and testing the entirety of his core beliefs.
For a character like the Captain, it’s his understanding of truth, trust, and justice that motivates him. He’s very much about ‘the cause of the people’ and has this admiral confidence in his country and its citizens to ultimately execute “what is right”.
..but what if what is ‘right’ was changeable? What if ‘truth’ was purely circumstantial and not absolute? Could Rogers have been misled in the freedom-fighting decisions he made in the past?
As he asks these questions of himself, Marvel gives us space to ask them too – where do our systems of belief lie? Are they rooted in something that’s relevant across generational change? – important things to consider in a culture where ‘truth’ is a trend-driven, self-defined and self-regulated compass.
For my money Captain America: The Winter Soldier delivers on everything you’ve come to expect from these films; there’s high action, cross-over plots, layered story lines – but best of all it ties to a timely message that even the non-tight wearing can take home.
9/10
