A solid entry but not Marvel's Dark Knight

Rating: Null/10 (3 April 2014)

Captain America's second solo outing sees him questioning his allegiances, punching people and pits Steve Rogers against the iconic comic book villain, The Winter Soldier. I had high expectations going into this film with many heralding it as the greatest solo film to date and some even saying it surpassed The Avengers.
THE GOOD: The hand to hand fight scenes are expertly choreographed and executed and this combined with great cinematography makes for intense and fact paced fight scenes. The characters of Captain America, Nick Fury, Black Widow are all expanded on and explored in greater depth through perfect writing and acting. The film also introduces new characters, Sam Wilson and Alexander Pierce who are equally memorable and great additions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Overall the direction and tone of this film is excellent, it's not quite as grim as a movie like The Dark Knight but much more serious than many other MCU entries and rightfully so. However the film does have several good moments of levity, which are all well timed.
THE BAD: While the hand to hand fight scenes are well crafted the big explosion set pieces are poorly handled. Chalk it up to bad directing or bad writing but they just didn't have the impact they were supposed to. At the climax of the film 3 enemy helicarriers all begin firing on and crashing into one another which is impressive at first but it quickly becomes boring to watch. There's no jeopardy as we know that Captain America isn't going to die and the mix mash of gray and orange fire and rubble quickly becomes numbing and uninteresting. My biggest complaint with the film however is the character of The Winter Soldier. He is a rather insignificant part of the story and is reduced to a henchman rather than a fearsome antagonist. It can be assumed that they are laying the groundwork for further development of this complex villain but in the context of THIS film, the character is underused.
All in all I had a very solid time with this film but I couldn't shake the vibe that it felt like Avengers 1.5 rather than Captain America 2. Despite ending on a Desolation of Smaug-esque cliffhanger, I did get a certain feeling of resolution and I left the cinema perfectly satisfied. I eagerly await future Phase 2 films, and the eventual Captain America 3
Also, the TWO post credit scenes are top notch. Easily the best ones to date.