Rating: 5 out of 5 Secretive Government Assassins
Review: I'm sure by now you've heard all the hype and the movie lives up to that hype so there isn't much I can say about it. The movie is excellently paced, the action set pieces are awesome, the plot is rock solid and the acting is stellar. I've heard people say that it's the best Marvel movie ever. This is certainly in my top 3 but I really like Avengers and the Thor movies, especially the first one, is endlessly watchable to me because of the balance between comedy, drama and action. We'll have to see how many times I watch it when it comes out on DVD because my opinion of it may go up. I just want to touch on two things.
First off Anthony Mackie as Falcon is just totally badass. He owns his screen time and has made that version of the Falcon a really desirable character to me. I now want more Falcon, I want the Falcon action figure, I want a Falcon movie, I want a Falcon poster, I want everything Falcon. I never really gave much of a shit about Falcon but now I can't wait to see more.
Secondly I just wanted to touch on something I read from Sebastian Stan. In one interview he evoked Heath Ledger's name and Ledger's Joker as a major influence. I just didn't see that in his own performance as Winter Soldier. As the Winter Soldier Stan doesn't really have a whole lot of lines but holy shit does he pack in a whole of emotion in his smallest action and especially in his eyes. Right from the start Winter Soldier is established as a threat, he is a credible threat to Captain America. You wonder how Cap could possibly go up against this guy and win. He is shown to be capable, fearless and relentlessly violent. The people that challenge him barely escape intact, nobody gets a clean win over him and it makes you afraid any time someone gets into direct conflict with him. He is just pure, focused hatred and anger not really the anarchist psycho that Joker was. What I'm saying is his performance is excellent and the character is really well done (stay until after the credit for probably the best non-action Winter Soldier scene). As far as a Joker-level tour de personality? I just don't see it. I do look forward to seeing more Sebastian Stan though, I really hope he has a long Marvel career ahead of him.
Well, that's Winter Soldier, go see it, it's awesome. The plot will definitely affect the Marvel cinematic universe from here on out but what I'm MORE interested in seeing is how it affects next weeks Agents of SHIELD.
