Captain's Commentary

Rating: 10/10 (6 May 2014)

A lot of people expect Capt. America stories to be jingoistic right wing combat porn, but in the mid-1970's, writer Steve Englehart did a kind of parallel Marvel Universe Watergate-saga called 'The Secret Empire,' which showed corruption reaching the pinnacle of US politics, and Capt. America was confronted with reality.
And in the early 2000's, writer Ed Brubaker again brought contemporary politics and war into the Capt. America storyline with the original version of the Winter Soldier. Brubaker's run writing Cap was the best ever for Our Hero.
This film is a brilliant synthesis of the best political CA story lines and the 1970's conspiracy movie thrillers, such as 'Day of the Condor' and 'All the President's Men,' and the presence of Robt. Redford here is a clear signal of what the directors intend.
It's also clear to anyone with the slightest bit of imagination that the main plot is a hard-hitting critique of the US's policy of assassination-by-drone...Cap's pal Nick Fury intends to pre-emptively rub out 20 million 'bad guys' in order to (supposedly) protect 7 billion.
Chris Evans nails the difficult part of being an earnest and noble man in the modern world, and there is copious high quality super-heroic stage business, as Cap (and his pals Black Widow and the Falcon) smash their way through the requisite armies of henchmen and super-villains. The directors and fight choreographers also nailed the difficult task of translating Kirby-esque shield-slinging fight scenes into cinematic reality...this film, like the 2013 Thor movie, was like a living silver-age Marvel comic.
So we have been given a pulse-pounding conspiracy thriller and socio- political critique, delivered in the mighty Marvel manner. This is the best (so far) of the comic-book movies. But will it spur a discussion? Will it awaken America to the sense of outrage we so adeptly suppress...the grim reality that we inhabit the Drone nation...sending our aerial buzz-bombs into the world, killing thousands of innocents? Will this film knock our blinders off, bring the realization that our mealy-mouthed pseudo-liberal and belligerent right-wing politicians are bringing unprecedented death and destruction to the world? Only time will tell.
But it's telling that in a time of political corruption of a scale and nature which makes the Nixon Administration look like a church picnic, the only main-stream film with the guts to speak up is a comic book movie.