Review of the Winter Soldier

Rating: 10/10 (19 July 2014)

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for The Winter Soldier, may seem to dis The Dark Knight Trilogy (which I love, just not as much as this movie) and somehow, contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Deathly Hallows part 1 and Deathly Hallows part 2. I seriously don't know how that happened. I left reviewing this film for so long and I really wanted it to be the first film I reviewed I think I may have over-thought. I have bracketed the spoilers in the word SPOILER! to warn you, so if you don't want spoilers, look out.
I seriously cannot believe that the entire Dark Knight Trilogy is rated above the Winter Soldier. I truly believe that The Dark Knight is the best superhero movie made so far (best but not my favourite-BIG difference)but Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises are long winded and (at points) boring.
The Winter Soldier completely surprised me when it came out. The movie was truly brilliant and the plot-line was near perfect. In this movie they introduce some new characters and bring back some old ones. This movie was perfectly paced and the plot was not only interesting but also understandable. With many superhero movies the plot is often 'Stop the aliens in a heroic way' or 'Fight the bad guy in a heroic way' (this obviously does not take into account origins stories and sub-plots). This movie is truly different with a thriller/conspiracy storyline. It references past avengers movies and characters but is easily watchable as long as you know the basic story lines to The First Avenger and Avengers Assemble.
The characters were portrayed brilliantly in this movie. However, I will say there was not much character development besides with the winter soldier. Nick Fury was finally made likable to a wide audience while still being slightly manipulative. He is basically the Dumbledore of The Winter Soldier, using his 'death' to manipulate people.
The dialogue isn't the best in the world although it was delivered expertly. There was however beautiful dialogue exchanged between two characters who may just be mentioned in the title in the pivotal fight of the movie which- I'm not gonna lie- made me cry.
This of course brings me to what was truly awesome in this movie. The fight scenes. How the shield is used, how the setting is used, how sound effects and visual effects are used in this movie to create unbelievable fight scenes make the movie worth watching alone. They do what is possibly my favourite thing in superhero and action movies right now: They fight in broad daylight! Seriously, unless characters and weapons are lit up (which, if done wrong can look like a session of cool but tacky laser quest)then fights in darkness are just hard to see. Daylight adds more of a dramatic edge while also being perfectly visible. Yay! They use darkness in this movie, but thankfully, only for mysterious and tense moments.
In conclusion, this movie made me like Captain America and Nick Fury again, convinced me even more that Black Widow and The Winter Soldier are awesome, and even if your primary thought throughout this movie is 'IT'S ROBIN SCHERBATSKY'(the main comment from who I went to see this movie with and hadn't seen Avengers), you'll love it anyway. It is unbelievably underrated and was under-advertised. If you haven't seen it already (What are you waiting for? It's been months!)then I strongly (very strongly) suggest you do. I cannot wait to re-watch it when it comes out on DVD. I hope you enjoyed this review and love/will love the movie as much as I do.