OTF's Blue Publication May 2014
Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier picked up where The First Avenger left off, with Chris Evans as Steve Rogers, with his trusty notepad, still trying to acclimate to having been asleep for 70 years, and finding that Hydra was still the enemy.
The humor was apparent from the outset of the film, with Steve Rogers running circles around the soldier that would later be revealed as Falcon, a role that was cast brilliantly in the form of actor Anthony Mackey. Once they were done with their early morning workout, Scarlet Johansson’s Black Widow arrived. She pulled up in a car and said she was ordered to bring a fossil back to the Smithsonian. And if you listen closely, you’ll hear the voice of Gary Sinise on the loudspeaker at the Smithsonian.
Then came the meat of the film. Captain America and Black Widow were thrust into a 2-prong mission, again highlighted by humor. Back Widow was trying to convince Steve Rogers to ask a nurse on a date, to which he told her to “secure the engine room” of the boat they were on first. This was just the start of the mystery that was woven through the plot of “The Winter Soldier.”
How is Steve Rogers going to cope in a post-9/11 world? Why did SHIELD go on lockdown? Why were Steve Rogers and Nick Fury under attack? Whose side is Robert Redford’s Secretary Pierce on? What’s the real deal with Emily Van Camp’s character? Who is the legendary The Winter Soldier, and how has he been at work undermining the security of every nation on the globe for the last 70 years? Where would Stan Lee make his standard cameo in this Marvel movie? And of course, if you’re a true Marvel fan, you wondered about the mid-credits and post-credit scenes, and how they set up Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Winter Soldier, the way Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Evans, Emily Van Camp, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackey and (spoilers!) The Winter Soldier all played off of each other, and eagerly await the likes of “Guardian Of The Galaxy” and “Age Of Ultron,” as well as the newly rumored “Black Widow stand-alone film. Maybe we’ll finally find out what happened in Budapest.