Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier fuses the paranoid political thriller and the superhero action showcase. That it does so well, in part and in total, is a remarkable achievement.

Here's the setup: Cap & Black Widow (Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson) are the two most attractive people in government service. They're also a superhero team that flies around the world doing secret missions for SHIELD. SHIELD is basically the DHS, but competent, international, and much better funded. SHIELD, however, may have a hidden agenda. Will Cap & BW sort things out in time?

Well, yeah, of course they will. That's not the point. The point is how well the film tells their story. Robert Redford (as, basically the Secretary of SHIELD) and Samuel L. Jackson (as himself) carry the political thriller aspects of the picture with aplomb. Evans & Johansson, who team up with Anthony Mackie (of the criminally underrated Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) to battle Frank Grillo (Warrior) and Sebastian Stan (Black Swan), make a great action duo. They combine athleticism with real acting chops, selling both their battles and their dialogue.

That said, the real star here is the story. It's like a finely tuned machine, shifting from character beats to action set-pieces and back again smoothly and gracefully. It parcels out information at just the right pace to allow us to keep up, and it hangs together well enough that it still makes sense a few days later.

In short, this is a successful motion picture. It clips along briskly, it's well engineered, it involved me in the lives of its characters, and it kept me engaged the entire time.

But that isn't what I'll remember about it.

I'll remember two particular moments (the second of which is a spoiler). The first is minor piece of set-dressing. When Redford's character opens his kitchen refrigerator, the astute viewer will notice that he stocks his fridge with Newman's Own marinara sauce. That's a nice touch. The second is the most powerful scene in the movie. Villain Frank Grillo, all muscles, veins, and menace, is pointing his gun at the back of a computer technician's head, commanding him to enter a code that will make bad things happen. The technician, whom I'm guessing is played by Aaron Himelstein, squirms with terror. Nevertheless, he refuses to enter the code. That's fine, but the part that sells the moment is that he doesn't refuse nobly, standing up to the meanie and telling him to get stuffed. He practically squeaks his refusal, trying to melt into his chair and probably $#!^ting his pants. It's the bravest damn thing I've seen in a movie all year.


Well done.

The Grey

In The Grey, Liam Neeson plays a rifleman at North Slope oil operation. His job: shoot the large, fearsome wolves of Northern Alaska before they attack men out working on the equipment. For reasons that will be explained later in the film, he is deeply depressed and contemplating suicide.

On a charter flight from the North Slope down to Anchorage, his plane goes down. It falls to Neeson to rally the survivors and lead them first to shelter, then to home. This will pose challenge enough, until the wolves show up.  Now Neeson, without his rifle, must fight them for the survival of his pack.

What follows is an exciting, action-packed hour and a half of survivalist, wolf-battlin' action in the Frozen North. Neeson has both the acting and action chops to hold the film together, the set-pieces are both gripping and understandable, and the whole thing works. Will it provoke deep thought and long conversations? No. But it's a pleasant diversion and can make 90 minutes of your flight back in coach whiz right by.

Warrior

The poster for Warrior tells you most of what you need to know about the movie.  Two guys who appear to know their way around a hypodermic needle are going to fight.  One of them’s probably the bad guy, and one of them’s probably the good guy.  There’s gonna be a training montage, and someone’s going to look to a woman in the audience for inspiration.

For the most part, you’d be right.  Nevertheless, Warrior steps enough outside that mold to keep itself interesting, and it delivers a fine montage, great fights, and enough of an emotional wallop to choke me up at the end.  See, the fighters are brothers.  With issues.  They bond.  I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

Yes, yes, yes.  We’ve seen a number of the story elements a million times.  And really, how do you do anything new with a shot of supporters back home cheering at their television sets?  But hey, I liked these people all the same.  I cared about them and I cared who won the big fight, and why, and how.  Warrior is a perfectly respectable entry in the “fight movie” catalogue.