The best 70s political thriller that could have been made as a comic book action film

Rating: 7/10 (8 October 2014)

Version I saw: UK cinema release (2D)
Actors: 7/10
Plot/script: 7/10
Photography/visual style: 6/10
Music/score: 6/10
Overall: 7/10
The Winter Soldier is the second film starring Chris Evans as Captain America. The first was set almost entirely in the 1940s, and documented his origins. It was a black-and-white good vs. evil story of the kind that is very dated by today's standards... which is exactly what it needed to be, to set up the character that is Cap, the 'Man Out of Time', whose obsolete, simplistic value system often comes into conflict with the complexities of the modern world.
In this film, The Winter Soldier, we see him some time into his new life in the present day, long past the initial disorientation which has been done many times elsewhere and didn't need to be seen again. However, he still has some adjusting to do, as a major institution on which he depends - the covert military operation S.H.I.E.L.D. - turns out to have corruption in it. This was the stock in trade of a number of conspiracy thrillers during the 60s and 70s, during which the world learned to distrust. It's a lesson Cap has to learn at an accelerated pace, in an emulation of those films like 'All the President's Men'.
To this end, the choice of Robert Redford as the calculating villain at the centre of the conspiracy is a knowingly ironic one. Redford starred in AtPM, as well as other thrillers of the type. In fact, over the 40 years of his film career, he has generally been one of Hollywood's most prominent liberal spokesmen, as well as one of its biggest stars.
On Cap's side are two characters who have served to weave together the Marvel film-verse, even though neither has ever had as prominent a role as they do on this occasion. Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) is a counterpoint to Captain America: a hero who has learned the bitter lesson of suspicion, and perhaps been blinded by it. Meanwhile, Scarlett Johansson is the de facto co-star (and love interest?) as Black Widow, who goes on the run with Cap. She gets some real emotional scenes and carries them off in a way I would barely have believed if I had not seen 'Her', in which she gives a performance of unprecedented subtlety, showing me for the first time that she really can act.
What the film does well, it does *very* well. The action scenes are exciting, with some cool touches in the fight choreography, and the political allegory, if a bit unsubtle, is forcefully put and well illustrated. If I have any criticisms, they are as follows:
1. The Winter Soldier character himself was pretty peripheral to the overall plot, and his story was never very well explained. I was left feeling like there was a lot more to tell, but surely this, being the movie with him in the title, was the one in which that should have been told.
2. Toby Jones' character, Dr. Arnim Zola, giving what amounts to a massive plot info-dump. Having to explain so much of the story in one expository lump is a sign of lazy writing. His explanation for doing so is not very good either.
The modern comic book action and the tense, morally ambivalent political games don't quite sit comfortably alongside each other but, if you were going to put them together, this film is probably the best result you could hope for.