Captain America: The Winter Soldier review - Marvel brings their A-Game again

YOU have got to hand it to Marvel Entertainment for its management of the multiple tent-poles that keep all things Avengers flying high at the box-office.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Director: Anthony and Joe Russo (M)
Starring: Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Mackie
Rating: ***1/2

YOU have got to hand it to Marvel Entertainment for its management of the multiple tent-poles that keep all things Avengers flying high at the box-office.

The company continues to make a considerable effort to ensure the world does not come down with a terminal case of superhero fatigue any time soon.

In the case of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, yet again the grunt work pays off. This time on behalf of the uncoolest commodity on Marvel’s costumed crime-fighter books.

As this sequel commences, Captain America (Chris Evans) has already been defrosted from the icy purgatory where we last saw him, and is now frisbee-ing his mighty shield in the present day.

However, while the good Cap’n can certainly handle the heat of modern battle — just check out his takedown of a pirate freighter in a cracking opening action set-piece — he’s getting a bit chilly on the politics Uncle Sam is using to pick his fights.

A bizarre and ethically dubious bid by the US to police the planet with the aid of gigantic, permanently airborne “heli-carriers” is the final straw.

Captain America no longer content to be his country’s poster boy for all things patriotic.

The dude has some complex questions, and in the wake of a vast military conspiracy taking shape, he wouldn’t mind some truthful responses either.

“This isn’t freedom,” concludes the Captain. “This is fear!”

Whoa! This is uncharacteristically heady, hot-topic stuff for a Marvel film to be straying anywhere near, and The Winter Soldier is all the better for the brainpower that often propels it.

However, if it’s just a jolt of big-picture, small-consequences escapism you want, the movie has got you covered on that front as well.

Action scenes (though cluttered and shaky-cammed to the max) bring on the awe when needs be.

A sterling support cast led by Scarlett Johansson (still finding new places to take the charismatic Natasha ‘The Black Widow’ Romanoff), Samuel L. Jackson (in good form as S.H.I.E.L.D. big kahuna Nick Fury) and Robert Redford (yes, Robert Redford, not slumming it at all, thank you very much) looks after the rest.

A mission quite accomplished for those hooked on all things Marvel.