In this episode of Captain America,Steve Rogers battles to grasp his part in the advanced world, he collaborates with a fellow Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D operator, Black Widow, to fight a professional killer known as the Winter Soldier.
Beneath the expensive, computer-generated busyness of this second Captain America installment is a bracing, old-style conspiracy thriller made extra-scary by new technology and the increasingly ugly trade-offs of a post-9/11 world.
So all of this critical foam about how The Winter Soldier is highly political with its internet leaks and whistleblowers is just the scum on the glass after a refreshing egg cream-a leftover, a thing to wash off.
The Winter Soldier isn't simply a far more competent movie than its predecessor, The First Avenger, but is perhaps the most complete and assured MCU film since Iron Man.
If Captain America: The Winter Soldier is indeed an augur of things to come during this special-effects-laden summer, maybe it won't be such a painful season after all.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier celebrates the good guy, and when combined with smart commentary, incredible action, and a wonderful sense of humor, it's the best Marvel movie so far.
It knocks down a lot of the infrastructure the previous films had created, and it does so in a way that feels organic and refreshing for the Marvel world at large.
