Splatter: on FILM

This is NOT a film to take kids to.

Seizing : with purposeless violence. Sure the re-awakened Naziesque spy-game-death-threat works, but the tide rolls in and out. A long scene of heavy violence flows in followed by a casual sit down chat about what could be causing the violence. And over and over. What happened to “zero body-count” kind of films.Tons of death makes this a frustrated jaw-clencher / forehead-furrower.  It has some very cool action sequences, don’t get me wrong. It passes my Dad’s BEAK test: Big Explosions and Kicking. Add bounding parkour and the cap playing skins vs. shirts, and I’m in. Perhaps we’ve been spoiled by well-chorographed fight scenes. But I can’t help feeling like this film was more like gaming, earning credits for hits taken out, than an action film with character, quirk, and purpose.

Gushing: with well-meant dialogue…”They call him the Winter Soldier.”

The so-called Winter Soldier… is in the film very little. Also, Captain America, in the title role, plays a definite backseat to Nick Fury as the driver and Black Widow sitting shotgun as navigator. Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johanssen get more screen time…if you don’t count the forty minutes (or so it felt) of the Cap walking despondently through his section of the museum or talking to his old lady first love with CG lips.

Wishing: with all of my Marvel love that this film could get more than a C+, especially since it stars my first love (other than Ralph Macchio) Robert Redford, who at least can still claim to be charming.