Review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) by Taka33 — 08 Apr 2014

As much as I enjoy the political thrillers of the 1970s for their simplicity and grittiness, there were some serious pacing issues with 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier', a film directly inspired by those films. Like some of the films of the 1940s that let themselves get bogged down in shoe-horned love stories, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” stumbled hard in the middle of the narrative.

Much of the problems in this film stem from Scarlett Johansson’s character. She’s really unnecessary to the overall nature of the film, except to impart some level of humanity to Captain Rogers. But the character of Emily VanCamp has no logical function at all. Ultimately, if the story had stuck to its guns as a political thriller throughout, it could have been fantastic. However, the film felt too bloated with all of its characters and it brought the film to a screeching halt.

Movies like “The French Connection” and “Serpico” live up to the political thriller genre. Unfortunately, “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” may be entertaining in a fun way but it is more a movie for kids and not the thinking man's political thriller we were promised by Disney/Marvel.