Captain America on the Edge

Captain America is living on the edge these days. He does this right along with the rest of us, in both movie adventure and, questionably, the real lives we live every day. The Winter Soldier’s story writing and movie making bring us the best of what movies have to offer us today in the way of real life resonance and technical know how which is both involving and uniquely emotionally compelling. 

One may groan at the thought of yet another superhero movie in the offering, and rightfully so some my attest due to the last ten years of post 9/11 movie making, but you would be remiss to skip this second installment of Captain America. We’re no longer in the 1940's folks. The enemy is at our doorstep, in our backyards, and has a very, very big gun aimed right at us.

In todays headline filled information society, we’ve all become begrudgingly aware that something, someone at sometime has come stalking us all. It might not be an overt villain like say, the Red Skull from Captain America: The First Avenger, but it might be something more insidious, more ethereal than can be displayed upon a movie screen whose character is torn from the pages of a comic book. This is a villainy threat that we all have a nagging feeling about and are made aware of now almost on a daily basis. 

In this latest installment, the writers are proving themselves “hip” to the social wonder-ings we’ve all developed as we watch rapid and dangerous changes take place within our surrounding world. In the guise of villainous bad guys, including corporate, governmental and also from the source of impossible technical fantasy, we’re reminded of that which has been made public on the information highway. This highway, like Captain America: The Winter Soldier, has become rife with “speeding cars” and “tragic accidents”.  

Fictional bad guys from the Marvel Universe have become the hidden secret societies of today. Captain America, with his “Gomer Pyle” type affectations, is drawn to the edge of this so-called alternative agenda which has come our way in the form of the argument over how much freedom must be sacrificed in order to maintain social balance. Our world may have no other worlds to conquer for it’s 7 billion inhabitants, except perhaps, it’s own. These bad guys could easily have been subjects of real life speculation such as the Freemasons, the Illuminatti and others who have supposedly directed history behind the scenes for generations now, all in an attempt to bring about their concept of how the world should be. There is even the mention of the now well known concept of a New World Order. What’s frightening is that this NWO may be something we, as ordinary citizens may have no choice about living within, and there will be NO Captain America to pull us back from the edge. 

We’ve all become regularly aware of the subject matter being covered here, and the cold reality that it doesn’t just belong to a country somewhere over there who is threatening our life over here, but your next door neighbor just might like the New World Order’s agenda. If you look closely at some of the scenes in this film, and some dang exciting ones there are, you’ll see technical prowess seamlessly placed into the mix between real life and what is done in the computer. 

In one scene Captain America is lowered down onto a ship by his comrade the Falcon and then they both start to walk toward the camera. If you are not looking closely, you won’t catch the fact that the landing moment is all computer generated image and we really don’t see the actors walking towards us until a moment later when real life and movie magic are miraculously made into one. If you consider it, it’s kind of a hidden commentary on the subject matter at hand that this sort of thing happens all over this film with the viewer never realizing it. It is a good thing, of course, to not be reminded that I am indeed in a movie, but the film is a product of it’s own times, in technology, social conscience, and the draw of the characterizations of the actors upon the viewing public. The viewer won’t even realize it’s insidious effects whether pro or con.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier lives on the edge of all of our lives in both the large an small segments that affect us all. Marvel is almost genius in its realization of what would make a great movie for today’s viewing public, and one has to wonder just how long and how hard the crew that produced this heartfelt, wickedly smart and thoroughly engaging film, had to work in order to bring us a movie that drops right into the center of our lives. Consider the fact that a movie called Captain America has already broken records around the world before it had even opened in the United States, and you get a real feel for how the whole world has become aware of life on the edge.   

5 0f 5 stars