On Jimmy Fallon the other night, Captain America himself Chris Evans was interviewed with his kid brother. WHo he teased mercilessly for their childhood years. Meant to be amusing, it was an uncomfortable segment that veered into cruelty with the greatest of ease.
That Chris Evans smirk throughout the show is his natural habitat and he used to to good effect as the Human Torch in the Fantastic Four series but he can’t use it as the good guy uber alles Steve Rogers in “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” so it is disconcerting that it always bubbles under the surface of this achingly sincere Marvel movie.
Captain America has been de-frozen for a couple of years when the movie opens, now an operative for SHIELD (aka CIA) headed by Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury, who is assassinated near the top of the movie as a plot to kill all off unwanteds implicating both SHIELD and HYDRA (their nemesis) unravels.
Cap’n, along with the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) are out to save the world and avenge Fury and with a top UN Official (Robert Redford) to help em from the inside, off we go as Steve discovers he might actually know the assassin “Winter Soldier”of the title. Falcon does perform one piece of great rock criticism, telling Capn the only thing he needs to know about the modern age is on Marvin Gaye’s “Trouble Man”. Capn jots down the name next to Nirvana’s on a handwritten list.
It is an OK ride, lotsa action, some real emotion, but Chris just isn’t the Captain, he is the bratty Human Torch and it is a major piece of miscasting at the heart of the movie. And the concerns the movie rises, the widespread spying on, well, on everyone, may be real but they don’t need to exaggerated.
Grade: C+
