Review: "Captain America: The Winter Soldier"

Director(s): Joe Russo & Anthony Russo
Runtime: 136 minutes

Compared to the attention that Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and Thor all received as part of Marvel's cinematic universe, the first Captain America film felt like an afterthought. Though not a disaster, Joe Johnston's take on the patriotically monikered hero felt like a less significant development in the run up to 2012's The Avengers, despite the major jump in time it had to go through to catch up with the rest. The good Captain has no superpowers or super armor, and his entire concept feels outdated in the current superhero revival that's dominated Hollywood for about a decade. 

Yet where Marvel's other Phase II films, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World, have stumbled, Captain America has thoroughly redeemed himself with his second outing. The sequel, subtitled The Winter Soldier, explores new ground for its title character, and does so while working in genre elements unlike anything encountered in the Marvel universe to date. With a smooth script, engaging performers, and efficiently doled out commentary, The Winter Soldier is the best standalone Avengers film since the first Iron Man. 

When we first run into Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) this time, he's more adjusted to the modern world, albeit still with questions (he keeps a list of things to try or research). Yet he remains an insanely buff fish out of water. One of the best things about Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's screenplay is how it weaves Rogers' clashes with the modern world into the conspiracy-flavored story. S.H.I.E.L.D., the military intelligence agency tasked with filling in the gaps of the Avengers, finds its leaders under attack. Rogers is already on iffy terms with  S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). The pair have rather different views on honesty and freedom, and Rogers feels increasingly uncomfortable with the level of surveillance that S.H.I.E.L.D. is tapping into. 

Things don't get much better when a series of calamities befall the agency, putting the Captain on the run from his former comrades and co-workers. Only the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and the Falcon (Anthony Mackie) seem trustworthy. Meanwhile, a dangerous assassin named The Winter Soldier is running amok, complicating things even further.

However, even with all of this plates spinning, new directors Joe and Anthony Russo keep the film running smoothly. The different Marvel characters offer opportunities to explore different genres on their own, and The Winter Soldier does by far the best job. In its DNA are strands of spy thrillers and the conspiracy films of the 70s (Robert Redford even appears as an upper echelon S.H.I.E.L.D. member), right alongside the flashier, more expected superhero components. Though the pyrotechnics get a bit heavy in the finale, the film remains committed to its plot and characters enough to hold together. 

With so many potential explanations for everything going on, it would have been easy to mess up the big reveal. Yet again, the film surprises. In a fun cameo from the first Captain adventure, The Winter Soldier is able to lay out its big moment in a way that is genuinely exciting. That it is able to do so while establishing a connection to the previous film (which took place in World War II), while still upping the dramatic tension in the present, is an even bigger accomplishment. Where other Phase II films moved inches forward with actual developments, The Winter Soldier takes massive leaps forward, introducing a complicated new world order to an otherwise overly safe cinematic universe.

The actors seem to be having quite a bit of fun with it as well. Though it would be all to easy for a character like Captain America to be dated and bland, Evans' portrayal remains charming, rather than sleep-inducing. The trickiest part of the Captain, his old fashioned, slightly idealistic worldview, comes through nicely as it clashes with modern ideas of politics and national security. Meanwhile, Johansson and Mackie make nice contributions as the Captain's would be sidekicks. Their histories (or cover stories) are, like other character development, handled efficiently, giving them enough weight to be resonant, yet never melodramatic. Each character is also given enough to do when it comes to the action, thus ensuring that no member of the main cast feels like filler.  It's especially nice to see Johansson get so much more to do with her Black Widow character, and it makes the promise of an upcoming solo film for her seem like an even better idea. Charisma may ultimately win the day over raw displays of acting prowess, but that's exactly what this sort of adventure calls for, and the main actors deliver without forcing the chemistry. 

The central roles are so nicely handled that it hardly matters that the Winter Soldier himself is a bit undercooked as a villain. Those who have seen the first film or looked at the cast list will know his true identity. But, unlike the other characters, his past experiences don't register enough. He's more of an empty villainous pawn that a compelling antagonist in his own right. 

Similarly, most the tech categories don't offer much of worth, accomplishing their jobs at a plain, functional level. The compromise of this modern-day Captain America is that, in isolation, his new world is a bit of bland setting from a visual standpoint. Sound, stunt work, and editing, at least, have the appropriate punch to lend an extra oomph to the relatively grounded action sequences.

Thankfully, the film's heart is in the right place where it counts. Visually impressive it may not be, but The Winter Soldier certainly makes up for it with its sharp attention to characterization and plot. It also deserves credit for tackling modern issues like government surveillance, modern warfare, and preemptive "kill lists" such that it feels germane to both narrative and character growth. There are no heavy-handed monologues striving to transform The Winter Soldier into an overbearing philosophical diatribe. Instead, these important issues play a role in creating a better sense of the world in which the Captain still struggles to blend in with. That extra touch of thought is what allows this Marvel sequel, the last building block before next year's The Avengers: Age of Ultron, to be thematically resonant while still providing rollicking blockbuster entertainment. 

Grade: B

Review: "All is Lost"

Director: J.C. Chandor
Runtime: 106 minutes

Almost all of Robert Redford's dialogue in All is Lost happens in voice over, during the first two minutes. As the camera pans across a cargo tank adrift at sea, we hear what are presumably his final words to those who knew him. Given the nature of the unnamed protagonist's circumstances, it's understandable that he would remain silent. Unfortunately, the film around Redford's stoic performance has even less to say than its lone character. Though effectively mounted and acted, All is Lost is ultimately too focused on the technical minutiae of survival to work as character study pitting man against nature.

As a simple tale of survival, All is Lost does still manage to get quite a bit right. Making a complete left turn from the talky financial drama Margin Call, writer/director J.C. Chandor acquits himself quite nicely when it comes to staging bare bones story. Strip the middle section of Life of Pi of its computer generated fantasias and persistent voice over monologues, and that's essentially what All is Lost has to offer. Chandor also ups him game considerably during the film's first storm sequence, which involves an Inception-like scene of things going topsy turvy. 

Mr. Redford also makes a nice impression, though for large stretches that is probably due more to basic physicality than acting. The sense of tough, world-weary sufficiency is practically etched into the actor's face at this point in his life. Like Tommy Lee Jones, the increasingly prominent lines and cracks on his face seem to render him more effortlessly expressive and dignified with each passing year. 

And that's why it's such a shame that Chandor's script is such a wafer-thin piece of writing. Though the incidents that move the story, which takes place over a week,  prevent repetition, they are all that the film has. Like Redford's character, stranded out on the ocean, the script rarely attempts a dip beneath the surface. Compounding this problem is that there simply isn't enough of a surface to scratch in the first place.

Movies that rely on lone protagonists up against the elements are always fighting an uphill battle. There's a need to provide some level of backstory, especially when there's no establishing scenes a la Cast Away. And if a movie isn't going to look at where its stranded protagonists came from, then it needs to find ways of showing who that character is as they react to their situation in their methods, as well as their reactions of moments of success and failure. 

In All is Lost, we can see that Redford is a resourceful man, and clearly an accomplished solo sailor. He knows how to plan, and how to keep his cool when things go from bad to much much worse. Yet without any other forms of emotional release, big or small, Redford sometimes comes off as a bit of an automaton, albeit one in disguise as a 77 year old man. Even when yelling at a cargo ship as they cross his path, there's an emptiness and a lack of investment that works against the film, rather than in its favor. 

Rather than turn its simplicity into a virtue, All is Lost's script comes off more as a blueprint of a story than is still a long way from completion. A film like this should be a prime showcase for both a director and an actor. However, given the writing, Chandor undermines himself and his leading man. If anything, Chandor has more room to shine behind the camera than Redford ever does in front of it. As a result, All is Lost is a well-made, yet curiously underwhelming film that is sabotaged by its own attempts at narrative and emotional minimalism. It drifts on like the shipping container from the beginning, pulled by the waves, and never able to make any of its own. 

Grade: C+ 

Review: "The Company You Keep"

Director: Robert Redford
Runtime: 121 minutes

When a film comes front-loaded with stars, red flags start to go up. While it's impressive to see films that can string together stacked ensembles, there are always some immediate questions that arise. The big one is whether the film will give each member of the cast moments to shine, or if some of the stars have been cast in thankless roles strictly for their name value. While Robert Redford's The Company You Keep may not exactly be a great film, it can pride itself on being the rare example that manages to juggle a large, first-rate ensemble without dropping too many balls along the way.

Adapted from Neil Gordon's novel, Redford's latest directorial effort opens with the arrest of Sharon Solarz (Susan Sarandon) in upstate New York. A former member of the Weathermen (specifically, its radical militant arm), she's arrested for a crime that took place 30 years prior. Solarz doesn't resist, and goes along with as if it's exactly what she wanted. Yet Solarz's willingness to be caught creates a domino effect that starts to affect the lives of her former comrades. Local journalist Ben Shepard (Shia LaBeouf), who catches on to the story, eventually outs former Weathermen member Nick Sloan (Redford), who has been living under the alias of Jim Grant for decades. Sloan realizes that, with the FBI now putting extra effort into finding other members of the Weathermen, he'll need to abandon his life to set an old mistake right, and clear his name. 

And once the chase begins (both Shepard and the FBI), The Company You Keep starts to trot out its cavalcade of stars with smart efficiency. Sloan's contacts across the film are all more than plot devices. Each one manages to bring up a different facet of the Weathermen's lost ideologies, as well as Sloan's relationship to those ideologies, without becoming episodic. These scenes are nicely broken up with jumps to Shepard's parallel investigation, as well as a handful of looks at the FBI team trying to catch Sloan and his contacts. 

Though earlier detours are simpler (those involving Nick Nolte and Chris Cooper are closest to being strictly plot-oriented), the later encounters deepen the humanity of the chase. Richard Jenkins and Julie Christie (especially the latter) deliver poignant work as two very different kinds of former radicals. Jenkins' Jed is now a college professor, while Christie's Mimi is still boiling with radical fervor under the surface. Sarandon is also compelling in her fleeting screen time. As the woman who helps set off the plot, she's tasked with communicating years of confusion, regret, and broken idealism, and she does so marvelously.

For much of the story, Redford is more of sounding board onto which the ensemble reminisces. Thankfully, his work behind the camera more than compensates for his largely bland role in front.  We may be watching a man run from a 30 year old crime, but Redford's direction captures the cat-and-mouse game as if his crime had taken place in the first scene. The suspense is never overbearing, and is allowed to play out with a mature naturalism that helps define the film. 

Yet if the film is a strong showcase for its older cast members, the younger cast members get less satisfying material. Like Redford, LaBeouf doesn't have too much to work with, although his character traits are established much sooner and with greater clarity. Anna Kendrick, perhaps the ensemble's only truly wasted member, has even less as Shepard's FBI contact. The script tries to throw in a half-baked aside about the pair's former relationship, but it feels more like filler. Rising star Brit Marling fares better, and injects some spark into a similarly bland role, yet she's ultimately saddled with a subplot that is more intriguing on paper than in execution.

Though The Company You Keep handles its plot threads and the majority of its characters with skill, it comes across as a rather shallow piece. The engagement with the characters' ideas feels simplistic, even though the actors handle their dialogue well. While it marks a big step in the right direction for Redford from 2007's atrocious Lions for Lambs, the film is more concerned with being a thriller than a study of ideas, actions, and their implications. This makes it entertaining, but it also saps it of some dramatic power along the way. After moving along so smoothly for most of its runtime, the script shoe-horns in a little speech from Sloan meant to condense a bunch of ideas about journalistic integrity and personal growth into less than a minute. It has all of the subtlety of a hammer to the face. 

Though The Company You Keep never fully sinks, it is weighed down by its surface-oriented screenplay and a shrug-inducing ending. Overall, it's an engaging, well-made piece of entertainment, yet it also thinks that by merely touching on important ideas and history, it suddenly becomes weighty and meaningful. The real result is that the film just feels overly confident, without the goods to back up that confidence.

Grade: C+

First look at Robert Redford's "The Conspirator," and an adjustment for Damon's "Bureau"

It's about time. One of 2010's elusive period-piece Oscar hopefuls has finally come out of the shadows; IMDb provides the following premise:

Mary Surratt is the lone female charged as a co-conspirator in the assassination trial of Abraham Lincoln. As the whole nation turns against her, she is forced to rely on her reluctant lawyer to uncover the truth and save her life.

The film doesn't yet have a specific 2010 release date, though obviously it's being saved for the fall/winter to give it a bigger push for awards consideration. At this point, I'm not even sure if it's finished filming, so it could be a while before we even start to get some buzz on this project. I wasn't a big fan of Redford's Lions for Lambs (2007); I hated it to the core except for Streep and Cruise. However, this project, based on its cast (maybe McAvoy can finally score that first Oscar nomination?) and subject matter, has me intrigued. More will be posted as it arrives...and hopefully that won't be TOO long.

In other news, word has it that the Matt Damon/Emily Blunt pseudo-sci-fi thriller The Adjustment Bureau has been pushed from July 30th to September 17th. The post on Deadline Hollywood was only a list of Universal's upcoming releases and their current release dates, so there's no info as to why this delay has happened. Considering the lack of trailer, the film could either not be far enough along in post-production yet, or could be in need of a major reworking, which would be a shame considering the talent involved.