"Have you seen that old movie, The Empire Strikes Back?"

Rating: 10/10 (7 May 2016)

What are 'stakes' when it comes to super-heroes? How do they function when it comes to protecting people over the world and saving us from the enemies? What if there's destruction? How can people be trusted? Or, more philosophically, can the heroes trust themselves if they have to live with the deaths at their hands (or can they)? So many questions are at the heart of Captain America: Civil War, the sort of sequel-cum-culmination of a lot of plot threads and emotional stakes that have been set up since Iron Man 1 in 2008. It feels earned, and it's hard to not think of the immediate comparison of the other big super-hero beat-down of this year, Batman v Superman. Those comparisons could last all day, but I think it's also apt, even more-so, to think of this as a criticism of X-Men Last Stand, which was another film that had super-hero "registration" as far as being under control and the different factions that pop up and sides taken as far as who is right and wrong and the grey areas.
But where that film felt too cluttered by characters, Civil War is not. It very easily could've been, and it's easy to see it as not only are characters from the Iron Man and Captain America series here (Pepper Potts is out and Peggy Carter passes on early in this film, but that's fine, less potential clutter). But there are also additional characters from other movies (Ant-Man) and even a new character, a friendly neighborhood kid from Queens (you know him if you saw any images in the past month for even a nano-second, it's not as if the internet does a good job of keeping things on the low-down, it's Spider-Man), and yet everyone has a purpose, every character of some significance is given time to have a conversation and to talk about things so we know where they're coming from (i.e. Scarlet Witch and the Vision even do, which is a great couple of scenes), and so on.
The Russo brothers do a fantastic job of keeping things emotionally speaking with Rogers and Stark clear and yet complicated; we know that the deaths of so many in an explosion at the start of the film weighs down on Rogers (though perhaps we don't see it as much), while for Stark it's thrown in his face every other moment of every day, and the turmoil is there on his face all the time (though Downey Jr is such a gifted actor as to show it just enough and to modulate the turmoil so that it comes at striking times, all of it in the eyes, it's really one of his best performances of his career). So as this goes on the plot keeps going as well, with Daniel Bruhl playing a variation on a character in the comics (who I'm not familiar with but it doesn't matter) named Zemo.
This is an interesting villain and one of the better ones in the series (not Loki or Ultron level great but close), as he is *just a guy*. He's not some ultra criminal mastermind - though he certainly knows how to set up a mass explosion - but he is also someone who is another person who has the vast well of grief and vengeance from people he's lost (family but also just, as he says, "everyone") from his home in Slovakia. It's a good performance from Bruhl too, not too over the top (close to it but more realistic), and it's a play on past conflicts from other MCU movies. Yet here it makes its mark more because, well, this time it's more about how to tear up the super-heroes by doing it from the inside, which itself is reflective of SHIELD being taken down by Hydra in Winter Soldier and the seeds of doubt already there in 'Ultron'. It's a pretty strong creation for this particular movie.
This is a very operatic type of movie - The Empire Strikes Back gets name-checked and it almost feels like a bold statement, like 'really, did you just make that even in a jesting manner in this big bad-a** action sequence at this airport - but damn if it doesn't try and possibly does live up to that standard of blockbuster excellence. It's a lot of fun though, there's lightness and quips and jokes and moments visually, filmmaking wise, that makes this something that will entertain you if you're only looking for surface thrills. And at the same time I found a lot underneath, and what it all leads up to makes things devastating for the characters. It's not perfect - I have parts I can pick at as far as a particular character's fate following the battle, and a speech given at a funeral scene is so on the nose that there's barely a nose left to see - but it's about as good as mainstream action spectacle gets.