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Captain America: The Winter Soldier review – 'Marvel's dullest superhero' Captain America: The Winter Soldier review – 'Marvel's dullest superhero'
(about 2 hours later)
Captain America now battles a mysterious new foe called the Winter Soldier, but the watchable action pyrotechnics and a twisty new "conspiracy thriller" theme can't cover up the fact that Chris Evans's shield-wielder is the dullest superhero in the Marvel canon. Evans is upstaged here by every single member of the cast: Garry Shandling's portly, grimacing senator, Stan Lee's pop-eyed museum guard, a photo of Dominic Cooper glimpsed briefly on the wall ... they all exude more super-charisma and on-screen presence than poor old Evans. Captain America's co-star is leather-clad Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), that ass-kicking ex-Soviet adventuress whose auburn hairstyle is matched by her distinctive fake tan-type maquillage and restrained ochre lipstick. Samuel L Jackson is back as the SHIELD chief Nick Fury, coiled with eponymous rage. There is an excellent small role for Robert Redford as charismatic politician Alexander Pierce, nursing a top-secret new defence project. Captain America now battles a mysterious new foe called the Winter Soldier, but the watchable action pyrotechnics and a twisty new "conspiracy thriller" theme can't cover up the fact that Chris Evans's shield-wielder is the dullest superhero in the Marvel canon. Evans is upstaged here by every single member of the cast: Garry Shandling's portly, grimacing senator, Stan Lee's pop-eyed museum guard, a photo of Dominic Cooper glimpsed briefly on the wall ... they all exude more super-charisma and on-screen presence than poor old Evans.
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Captain America is not just a handsome face and a mighty pair of guns: he has a liberal conscience and like Edward Snowden, has developed an urgent fear that the nation's real enemy is the military-industrial-surveillance complex. And so it proves,leading to sensational disclosures of intimate betrayal, but the implications pop like bubblegum and make no appreciable difference to the superheroes' relation to each other and the world. Thanks to Johansson, Jackson and Redford, this is all good fun. It's a shame the weak link is the Captain himself. Captain America's co-star is leather-clad Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), that ass-kicking ex-Soviet adventuress whose auburn hairstyle is matched by her distinctive fake tan-type maquillage and restrained ochre lipstick. Samuel L Jackson is back as the SHIELD chief Nick Fury, coiled with eponymous rage. There is an excellent small role for Robert Redford as charismatic politician Alexander Pierce, nursing a top-secret new defence project.
Captain America is not just a handsome face and a mighty pair of guns: he has a liberal conscience and like Edward Snowden, has developed an urgent fear that the nation's real enemy is the military-industrial-surveillance complex. And so it proves, leading to sensational disclosures of intimate betrayal, but the implications pop like bubblegum and make no appreciable difference to the superheroes' relation to each other and the world. Thanks to Johansson, Jackson and Redford, this is all good fun. It's a shame the weak link is the Captain himself.