Deep action, shallow characters

Rating: 6/10 (7 April 2014)

Although containing political innuendos and a conspiracy-laden plot, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is at heart an action movie. The array of action scenes in this movie is both dizzying and exciting. Captain America raids a cargo ship controlled by terrorists; Director Fury battles villains in a SUV that is also a weaponized tank; the 'Winter Soldier' fights Captain America atop a floating helicarrier. Yet, as is unfortunately common with action-laced movies, the depth of the movie's action results in the shallowness of its characters.
Steve Rogers (aka Captain America) is a soldier out of time. Having been asleep for sixty years, the filmmakers could have done much with the theme of a 1940s man living in a post-modern world. Instead, the movie regulates this theme to a brief scene of the Captain trying to catch up on pop culture. (Even 'Austin Powers' played this theme with more panache.) The filmmakers instead focus on the Captain as a conflicted man, who only knows how to be a soldier and yet feels an unease in the modern military establishment. While this is interesting, it doesn't go far, as the Captain quickly opts back into his soldier/hero mode after expressing his discontent. Natasha Romanoff and Director Fury are similarly underdeveloped, perhaps because the movie has so much going on. Samuel L. Jackson nonetheless succeeds in being as brash, curmudgeonly, and entertaining as ever.
Without delving too deeply into the plot, the movie is about a long- festering conspiracy that is about to transform SHIELD into the harbinger of a new world order. The movie's political message appears to be that complex governmental institutions that are designed for our defense can quickly become instruments of oppression. Within all this, there is a not-so-oblique reference to America's use of drones and NSA's intelligence-gathering. This is all interesting; and yet, the scope of the conspiracy and the sheer ludicrousness of its goals divest the movie's political message of seriousness.
While there is much to critique, there is also much to admire. The action scenes are creative and intense. The occasional humor is light and enjoyable. As an entertaining action movie, Captain America amply succeeds.