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 (041114)
The subtitle of Marvel’s new Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes to us via
the famous opening passage in Thomas Paine’s Revolutionary War pamphlet “The
Crisis”: “These are the times that try men’s souls: The summer soldier and the
sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of the country
but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
Paine never mentions the winter soldier by name—his existence is to be inferred
from that of the summer soldier, a military fair-weather friend whose fraudulent
loyalty is exposed in times of adversity. Two centuries later, in the early
1970s, the organization of Vietnam Veterans Against the War held a series of
war-crimes hearings that became known as the Winter Soldier Investigation, the
idea being that he who truly loves his country will be brave enough to tell hard
truths about it.
In the new Captain America—sequel to
Captain America: The First
Avenger (2011)-the moral valence of Paine’s weather metaphor has been reversed. The
character nicknamed the Winter Soldier isn’t the steadfast, naïve Captain
America, aka: Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), but his treacherous nemesis—whose real
identity I won’t reveal here, but who has emerged far less spiritually intact
than Steve has from “the times that try men’s souls.”
What do revolutionary propaganda and Vietnam-era protest have to do with a
competently assembled corporate product like the new Captain America? Nothing,
probably; the Winter Soldier name comes from the well-regarded Marvel comic-book
series by Ed Brubaker, who has said in an interview that he first heard the term
in the context of the '70s hearings, learned much later it came from Paine, and
borrowed it less for the historical associations than for the sound: “It’s a
very evocative name for a Captain America villain.”
I’m just vamping, trying to find my way into a discussion of a movie that,
precisely because it’s such a competently assembled corporate product, seems as
impervious to analysis or criticism as its hero’s all-powerful concentric-circle
shield is to bonks from bad guys. But
among the various interrelated Marvel comic myths that have been converging over
the past few years into a unified Avengers cosmology (Iron Man, Thor, The
Incredible Hulk, etc.), Captain America does feel like the one that’s the most
concerned with taking a longer view of American history, if only because the
loyal and patriotic Steve Rogers, who spent the years between World War II and
the present day frozen in suspended animation, is a kind of reanimated fossil.
Steve’s status as a gung-ho mid-20th-century good guy in a morally ambiguous
21st-century world provides this pleasant if unremarkable blockbuster with a
modicum of ethical heft and a few sly jokes. In the opening scene, we catch a
glimpse of a notebook in which the recently resurrected hero has scribbled some
notes on cultural touchstones he’s missed out on during his long slumber: The
list includes Thai food, disco, and Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man.” That last is
recommended to him by his Army buddy Sam Wilson (appealingly played by
The Hurt Locker’s
Anthony Mackie), who later reveals himself to be a fellow super dude, the
mechanical-winged Falcon. But there are some less fun elements of contemporary
American life that Steve will soon have to grapple with: omnipresent government
surveillance, drone warfare, and inter-spy-agency skullduggery. He and Sam,
accompanied by Scarlett Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff aka the Black Widow, will
soon be on the run, unable to trust even the organization—S.H.I.E.L.D., led by
Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury—that’s purporting to protect them.
In its imagining of a corrupt and untrustworthy government honeycombed with
secret nefarious conspiracies, The Winter Soldier at times resembles a cleaner,
less gritty version of the paranoid political thriller of the ’70s, in which a
disillusioned hero goes rogue to discover the
truth. So it’s fitting that the movie co-stars conspiracy-thriller veteran
Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce, a suave diplomat who may or may not have the
best interests of S.H.I.E.L.D. at heart. Redford is an unexpected and bracing
presence in a movie of this kind; his presence, along with Jackson’s, lend the
movie a current of brainy countercultural hip that the script (by Stephen
McFeely and Christopher Markus, who also wrote both the last
Captain
America movie and
Thor: The Dark
World) doesn’t always earn.
It doesn’t make sense to review a superhero movie without mentioning the action
sequences, but the sad truth is the Niagara Falls’ worth of movie budgets
expended on blockbuster special effects are now wasted on this white-flag-waving
viewer. I can barely distinguish or remember who fell off what spaceship onto
what exploding aircraft carrier from movie to movie, so ubiquitous and
overextended and loud have such scenes become. To its credit, The Winter Soldier
(directed by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo) doesn’t casually exploit 9/11 by
destroying the skyline of a major city. But for a movie that often shoots for a
lighthearted, sunny tone, it has a hell of a high body count, with our heroes
routinely storming into enclosed spaces and mowing down everyone in sight. There
is a formidable amount of gunplay in the film that eventually wore me down. This
comes across as disturbing considering all of this occurs under the Disney
moniker.
The most memorable element of The Winter Soldier, besides Redford, is probably
Scarlett Johansson, whose dryly funny Natasha at times comes perilously close to
being … a well-developed female character? She never appears in a full-body
catsuit that I can recall, she cracks actual jokes rather than just reacting to
those made by her male counterparts, and she has an amusingly high opinion of
her own superheroic abilities, frequently comparing her intelligence favorably
to that of the shield-wielding hunk at her side. Evans continues to be engaging
as the refreshingly unbrooding Steve. He is particularly effective in the film's
best scene when Steve visits someone from his past that now resides in a nursing
home. It's amazing how a scene involving two people in a room conversing can be
involving and memorable without a shield gun or helicarrier anywhere to be
found.
All around, The Winter Soldier cheerfully and efficiently does its job doing
whatever Marvel movies are meant to do—make you look forward to the next one, I
guess. In the closing credits, the full-cast hoedown The Avengers: Age of Ultron
(coming in summer 2015) gets a teaser, as does the further-out Captain America
3, but I have to admit that I'm ambivalent. Perhaps and even better word would
be weary. These films, as they are currently being produced, have become
tiresome. They are merely pummelers: action scenes cut to within an inch of
their lives with some scattered humor designed to beat audiences into
entertainment submission. Even though they are made by different directors and
screenwriters, there is never any sense of a unique vision or voice. They are
all beginning to look like very special episodes of TV's Agents of Shield.
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