Captain America: The Winter Soldier Review

The Russos' insight was that Steve Rogers only becomes interesting when the institution around him is wrong. So they made a seventies conspiracy picture, cast Robert Redford as the man at the top to make the reference unmissable, and built the plot around surveillance and preemption rather than a beam of light in the sky. It works because the film commits.

The elevator fight is a small masterpiece of escalating dread, all shifting glances and shoulder checks before a single punch lands, and the highway ambush has weight the franchise almost never manages, cars crumpling, a shield ricocheting, Nick Fury shot up through a floor. Chris Evans finally has a role that uses his stillness.

Sebastian Stan says almost nothing and lands the emotional close anyway. Anthony Mackie arrives fully formed on a jogging track. The flaw is the ending, three identical airships and a long effects sequence spent swapping chips in exactly the way the rest of the film had avoided, and the reveal that Hydra was inside from the beginning is a shade too tidy for a script this sharp. Still, this is the one that proved the material could carry adult weight.