Directed
by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo
Okay,
I'm not even going to answer the question, Did
you like it?
Anyone who knows me knows the answer. And this is not going to be a
long, detailed review. I'm just going to throw some thoughts out
there that came to me during and after seeing the movie.
Due
to various things going on, I was afraid I wouldn't get to see it
before next weekend, but I managed to get to the early-evening
showing last night, thus on its third official day of US release.
Although I'm not one for whom spoilers ruin a film experience, I had
managed to avoid any real plot details beyond the most general or
those known to anyone who read Ed Brubaker's great run almost a
decade back now in one of the more recent “reboots” of the
Captain
America
comic book series, the first 25 issues or so of which I have in a
wonderful Omnibus edition the centerpiece of which is The
Winter Soldier
story arc that did the unthinkable – brought Bucky back from the
dead. (It’s also available as a series of smaller trade paperback
volumes.) So I was as close as possible for a comic book reader –
and fan of the earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe offerings – to
being a “blank slate.” Of course, the particular showing I
attended would be in 3D, and I still agree with my son (who saw the
movie the previous evening, but did not tell me anything other than
he thought I'd like it – duh!) that 3D does not add much of
anything to most movies, in fact seems to dull color and detail. It
certainly did not ruin the experience for me, though. And I was
anxious to see it, especially after belatedly, Friday night, finally watching the DVR'd episode of Agents
of SHIELD
from Tuesday, which ended with an “as-if-in-story” sequence
directly from the movie, where the Winter Soldier takes on Nick Fury
and his wonderful SUV – and had already seen such Internet
headlines as, “So What The @#$% Happens to Marvel's AGENTS OF
S.H.I.E.L.D.? SPOILERS”
on
Newsarama,
although I had not
clicked the link [LINK]
(I have now, and it has some good ideas), as well as various “leaks”
that the rest of the season of that TV show will deal directly with
the fallout from The
Winter Soldier.
And I am very glad I did – because nothing
is the same anymore. I will say this, though – for the first time
since the TV show debuted, I'm actually looking forward to the next
episode. So far I'd been watching the series more out of a sense of
duty, and enjoying it all right, but finding it disappointing – and
(no less astonishing to me than anyone else, given my initial
revulsion last
year
when it
debuted) enjoying the second season of Arrow
a lot more. Hopefully, The
Winter Soldier
is going to give SHIELD's
ratings a big boost – although were I Marvel Studios I would have
included a this-weekend-only after-scene basically flogging Tuesday
night's episode. That
is a lost opportunity.
This
was a marvelously (pardon the pun, which believe it or not was
totally unintentional) complex and textured film, driven largely by
character, primarily Steve Rogers as a living relic of an earlier age
when the world seemed a lot more black and white stuck in a modern
world where issues seem much more complex. Are they really? That’s
a question for another time. They definitely do a great job tapping
into the current zeitgeist
of societal fear centering on the ubiquity of information, how much
the government knows about individuals, what it is doing or may do
with that information – NSA spying, drone attacks, pre-emptive
strikes, how much freedom we are willing to trade for secrecy. It’s
what has made Person
of Interest
so compelling, bounding ever higher in the ratings, writ large and
translated to perfection into the world of comic book movies.
