The new Old World Order...

Rating: 7/10 (27 April 2014)

Things got off to a bad start when I went to see CAPTAIN America 2: thirty minutes of TELEVISION COMMERCIALS preceded the movie. Shades of MAN OF STEEL... Sure, I know we're all living in a Corporate Culture, now, but gimme a f***in' break! (The Corporate Culture of which I speak permeates the movie: The Falcon himself wears clothing sporting the infamous logo of a notorious, internationally-reviled sweat-shop operation wherein 1,135 worker-slaves died. Apparently, he has no qualms whatsoever about said building collapse...) On a more positive note, our heroes DO end up taking down the Neo Reich, whose intentions are to bring back the Old World Order. (They even mention Dr. Stephen Strange as "a person of interest." That's DR. STRANGE, for those of you who don't know- "Master of the Mystic Arts.") It was good to see former UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre as Batroc the Leaper, though his part was much too small. Most of the PHYSICAL hand-to-hand fight scenes are good, though some of the cgi are (as usual) forgettable. (The Falcon soars all too briefly in this movie, and gets his wings clipped far too soon.) The yellow-orange makeup slathered on Scarlet Johannson gives her a sickly, yellow-jaundice look and the "secret" of The Winter Soldier comes as no surprise to anyone who paid attention to the "foreshadowing." (And how DOES he get through metal detectors...?) All told, it's not a bad movie, but it IS long and talky for a superhero show. Hail Hydra. (Jack Kirby- who, along with Joe Simon, CREATED Captain America- also created a far more interesting character late in his comic book career- OMAC, The One-Man Army Corps, set "in the world that's coming." It's almost prescient, OMAC. It's set "in the era of the Super Rich," when a rich man can literally rent an entire city and populate it with hired assassins. You can also upgrade and get "new bodies for old." There's also Brother Eye in the sky, and the Global Peace Agency. Sound plausible...?)