3 out of 5

Directed by: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Chris Evans brings the same grounding charm to Steve Rogers that made the original film feel more emotionally substantial than just superhero antics, but in typical sequeldom, ‘Winter Soldier’ is a bit too over-stuffed and overblown to have time to come across as more than popcorn, making those quiet moments that are hoping for film legitimacy feel stale.  That being said, the MCU has done a fair job of establishing a baseline of quality that makes even the less impressive films entertaining (and entertaining to rewatch), and Cap 2 definitely meets that mark.  And at times exceeds.  Christopher Markus’ and Stephen McFeely’s script is actually a pretty impressive straddling of a large Cap storyline, tucked into big-screen flavoring.  They get a good balance of Steve’s heroism and questioning without tipping it into preaching or emo; Scarlet Widow’s banter has a nice edge of defensiveness to her non-stop sarcasm; and our villain’s monologuing actually follows some logic… even if the Big Bad Plan he’s executing is part of that overblown criticism.  But: we have three types of films going on here – political conspiracy, when Steve and Fury get suddenly wrapped up in a mole hunt within SHIELD, a ‘mysterious assassin’ story in the form of a masked, metal-armed tough guy who can knock Cap down, and then the Summer Extravaganza of Explosions that is the result of exploring these first two tales and mashing them together until things go boom.  And the jumble is a big part of how ‘Winter Soldier’ loses steam, as the two more interesting components (not the explosions) don’t get room enough to grow – and yet, in order to balance out the loud last third, the Russos insert many slow moments of Steve pondering life while staring at a static skyline.  It’s a respectable attempt to mimic the build of the original, but these scenes just do not have any passion, and are serviced better by the snippets of conversation Markus and McFeely wrote in.  The action scenes mostly have a nice organic feel to them, but it’s again been amped up for sequel-town, so everyone is a martial arts master and even Batroc can get in a good punch.  The balance just isn’t there: Cap is indestructible for a few minutes then suddenly flung across the screen.  The lack of consistency (even within a single battle) makes it hard for any given fight to be too thrilling.  There’s also an odd use of editing throughout the flick that kept taking me out of certain moments: show something, then a reaction shot.  Movie logic dictates that we generally flash back to the something that’s causing the reaction – but frequently the Russos (or the editors…) would flip to an entirely different subject of focus…

So I’m a bag of complaints.  More realistically, though, I’m comparing to the first film, which was unique on several levels – as a modern action flick, as a superhero movie, as a Marvel movie – whereas Cap 2 is more like what I would have expected in the first place.