Lead the way Captain!

Rating: 9/10 (6 January 2015)

As someone who is not well versed in the comic book lore of Captain America, he is quickly becoming my favorite superhero outside of Spider-Man and Batman. I really like First Avenger and appreciate it's unapologetic vibe of portraying Steve Rogers as a patriotic American who wants to fight for his country. You don't see that very often these days. And now that Rogers has woken up out of the ice and did his part with The Avengers, he's proved in this film that he's still a force to be reckoned with.
Whereas First Avenger was very Pro-America given it's WWII setting, The Winter Soldier doesn't hesitate to show the dark side of Patriotism and how bad it can get when it's put into the hands of the wrong people. It plays into Rogers trying to accept that the world has changed since WW2 ended but maintains his belief that America is still worth fighting for and that there are still people you can trust. Even when he along with allies Black Widow, Nick Fury and Falcon discover that HYDRA has infiltrated SHIELD and that the new assassin dubbed the Winter Soldier in town hunting down anyone who threatens to reveal the truth is revealed to be Steve's childhood/wartime friend, Bucky Barnes.
Winter Soldier is the installment in this franchise that shakes things up by being a more grounded and darker film than its predecessors but still maintaining the light hearted spirit the other films have, having some of the best action sequences that's ever been done in a comic book movie and having SHIELD go down with HYDRA to ensure that HYDRA doesn't stick around. This will undoubtedly affect the upcoming movies in a lot of ways and I'm excited to see where it goes. The Russo brothers who are primarily known for comedy flicks and TV shows did a brilliant job directing this movie and they excell at allowing the screenplay's strength to speak for itself.
Chris Evans continues to impress as Steve Rogers, Scarlet Johansson is even better here as Black Widow, Anthony Mackie is just AWESOME as Falcon, Robert Redford is probably the best actor they could've chosen for his character and Samuel L Jackson.... He's Samuel L Jackson, but in a good way. And Sebastian Stan as the Winter Soldier is terrific as well. And I have to admit that I think his reasons for being a villain were much better than I originally thought since the vision he has tells you everything you need to know about why he is the way he is. You don't necessarily need a 20 minute long scene devoted to his backstory.
This has officially made my list of best comic book movies of all time with TDK trilogy, Spider-Man 2 (2004), Days of Future Past, Iron Man 1 and the Avengers. I look forward to Age of Ultron and Civil War.