Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) - Review

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is a bundle of confused, self-contradicting political thoughts wrapped in a big slice of Hollywood bombasticism.

Is it criticizing the military-industrial complex? Kinda. But it also visually fetishizes the massive genocide carriers that it later decides to destroy. It suggests that the filmmakers aren't really opposed to these things under all circumstances, just to the point the slope gets too slippery for the filmmakers' tastes.

Well, who is to monitor and control the slippery slope? Why, the United States and, especially, the CIA, of course! At the end of the film Scarlet Johansson is in a hearing and essentially makes the same case as CIA torturers and Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men have made. It's basically, "You need us on that wall."

She scoffs at the thought of anyone bringing her or her compatriots at SHIELD to justice because, while they screw up and violate the law every now and then, they're still better than the really bad guys because, well, because she says so! She openly says in public that she and her compatriots are above the law and the film gives her a triumphant march off-screen when she does it. This isn't the celebration of justice, it is the triumph of moral relativism.

So what if SHIELD was nearly responsible for causing the largest genocide in history? They stopped it with about 2 seconds to spare, which is all that counts right? Pay no attention to all those dead people on the ground (the film doesn't). (The filmmakers count Hugo Chavez and Julian Assange among the bad guys, suggesting a hat-tip to American neoliberals in the former and a back-slap for the American national security state in the latter. Perhaps the State Department can give the Russos a star for their work.).

My concerns are borne out somewhat in a recent New York Times article about artistic criticisms of President Obama, in which co-director Joe Russo suggests criticism of Obama but then walks it back and defends the President on drones. It is a politics based on partisan mentality. Sure, Russo says, drones could be bad, but since he's apparently on Obama's team, Obama is to be congratulated for actually acknowledging the existence of drones. (Russo's praise of Obama's transparency is hopelessly ill-informed - the President is still trying to obfuscate even basic details on drones except when it is politically expedient to leak the material.) Never mind that the precedent is being set for another president, who may not be the man of virtue Russo wants in his presidents.

As for the rest of the plot: shit explodes and people chase after each other. Oh, and there's a megalomaniacal computer that involves a villain from a previous movie downloaded to 1970s computers (someone call the Luddite terrorists, it's Transcendence!). There are a few nods to a deeper, troubled character for the man behind Captain America's mask, but these small moments don't end up amounting to a whole lot once the film goes all in on blowing the digital hell out of everything.

The Russos don't do much with the action scenes, although they are competent (and a street chase involving Samuel L. Jackson's character is solid work). The movie looks perilously close to a cartoon. Everything looks like it was run through photoshop once or twice, rendering an animated quality to much of it. In an opening scene on a ship, the camera tracks Captain America running but it looks animated and the movement not quite human. It's bad enough in the action scenes, but in this one even the pillowcases on a dying old woman's bed look like computer generated silk.

One logical question: if these big ships are about to kill 20 million people, including most of the Avengers team, then why the hell doesn't someone call some other superheroes in to help? I get it, I get it: this is Captain America's film. But if you're going to play it like he's the only hero around, then play it that way; don't keep mentioning the other Avengers and leading us to wonder why someone doesn't think to put in a call to Iron Man. He would, after all, be most helpful in flying around to defeat the ships or to face off with the titular Winter Soldier (only one limb of iron).

The Winter Soldier is modestly ambitious in posing some tough questions about the duplicitous nature of the government.  I guess it is somewhat daring to have Captain America - Captain America - be less than enthused about what he sees out of the government and military. But the film is duplicitous in and of itself: it seeks to criticize the very levers of government with which it wishes to remain in bed. And rather than reaching stark, tough choices in the end, it sides with some rather unsavory folks and an unsavory mentality of "just trust us," suggesting the film's commitment to democratic and human values only kicks in when the filmmakers don't like the people in charge. Captain America has some qualms, but he's still firmly picking a side, no matter what happens.

The film also approaches the interesting in having a computer deliver a bad James Bond villain speech of exposition in which he suggests that the bad guy organization realized they had to let the people willingly surrender their values and principles in trade for security. There's also some criticism of predictive policing. But that falls apart because the bad guys' plot turns out to still hinge on a massive genocide that will hardly go over well with the population - i.e., they're still taking it by force. And beside, isn't the whole speech by Johannson at the end basically the same thing: you guys are going to voluntarily compromise your principles because you need us out there protecting your security, now watch me haughtily walk out smirking all the way.

The whole virtue of having bedrock principles and values is that it doesn't matter whether we like or even trust the people in charge. If they are limited by the rule of law, then we can always take comfort in that they can't transgress certain lines. It is the law that is our protection, not some self-appointed group of militaristic spies and warriors. But in this movie, the worthiness of the lines depend entirely on who is transgressing them. If you like or trust someone enough, the film suggests, they can do whatever they want, go wherever they want, and kill whomever they desire. Just trust them. That's not nearly as comforting as the Russos think.

Screened in the theater.