Winter Soldier is an action-packed rollercoaster ride with back-to-back car chases and gunfights, complete with a super villain sporting a ski mask that recalls Bane’s tarantula mouthpiece in Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. What’s more, the story line capitalises on the post-9/11 tension between national security and civil rights, a theme that is certain to resonate with the American public.To less devoted viewers, the sequel is mediocre at best. The storyline is predictable and straight off the template. Senior S.H.I.E.L.D. official Alexander Pierce (played by Robert Redford) hatches an evil plan to kill millions of potential terrorists with world-ending weaponry, based on a dubious computer program that predicts criminal behaviour. To make that happen, Pierce takes out his deputy Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and goes after every superhero agent who stands in his way. We don’t know what happens to Ironman and the rest of the Avengers – they are nowhere in sight even in a time of great crisis. What we do know is that Captain America and Black Widow have gone rogue to foil Pierce’s mass murdering scheme. Epic battles ensue, and the captain saves the day. It’s all pretty standard action hero stuff. There isn’t a single surprise during two hours of formulaic schlock.
Chris Evans delivers what is expected of him, playing a patriotic soldier with a vibranium shield and an even stronger moral compass. Constrained by the straight-laced character he plays, Evans is easily upstaged by girl-next-door Scarlett Johansen, who has a knack for lighting up the screen whenever she appears on it. Nevertheless, the Black Widow we see in Winter Soldier is not nearly as cunning and manipulative as the one in The Avengers. It is a let-down for Black Widow fans, as the character’s biggest asset has always been her brains and not her brawn. Robert Redford is an unlikely yet welcome casting choice for the villainous mastermind. He lends an air of credibility to the otherwise uninteresting role and, for a few fleeting moments, turns the film into a 3D remake of All the President’s Men.
It is worth noting that Winter Soldier features some of the genre’s best fight scenes in recent memory. The opening sequence that puts Captain America in hand-to-hand combat with pirates aboard a hijacked vessel marks the high point of the entire film. The thrilling set piece has Yuen Wo Ping’s fingerprints all over it. It goes to show that martial arts choreography is, and will continue to be, Hong Kong’s greatest contribution to Hollywood and one of the city's proudest cultural exports.
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