“Captain America: The Winter Soldier” may be deeply mediocre and ultra-predictable — but before you Marvel fans race to your keyboards to protest, let me start with some things I liked.
There’s a highly entertaining performance by a cast-against-type Robert Redford at its center, and it gets some points by trying to spice up the oh-so-familiar Marvel formula with more hand-to-hand combat in between all the computer-generated battles.
Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson are in good form as the defrosted super-soldier Captain America and the sexy Natasha/Black Widow who fails to thaw him romantically — plus there’s considerably more humor than in “Marvel’s The Avengers’’ (which I found pretty enervating).
The idea of framing the story as a ’70s political paranoia thriller is also worthy, at least theoretically. Too bad the committee that assembled this project didn’t seem to realize (or care) that this approach meshes awkwardly with the over-the-top action sequences, Marvel/Disney’s determination to avoid offending any potential audience members — or the requirement to set up the next “Avengers’’ movie.
Avoiding specifics is like writing a review with one hand tied behind my back, so I need to venture into areas that Marvel die-hards might consider spoilers. All of which are telegraphed well in advance, because, despite all of their whining, the fans of these movies don’t really seem to like surprises (not to mention negative reviews).
So stop reading now, while I enter the critic protection program.
Well before a mortally wounded Nick Fury tells the Cap to “trust no one,’’ directors Anthony and Joe Russo use ominous camera angles in his first scene to clue us in that Redford’s Alexander Pierce, a senior leader within S.H.I.E.L.D., is in no way to be trusted.
So it comes as no real surprise that Pierce is the film’s chief villain, who orders hits on Cap, Natasha, Nick and their new ally Falcon (an underused Anthony Mackie) to carry out his nefarious plan for world conquest — which involves flying aircraft carriers loaded with missiles to take out millions of potential terrorists.
Lest anyone think this is some vast right-wing conspiracy, consider that Pierce’s buffoonish chief political ally is played by comedian Garry Shandling. And to further remove it from any possible contemporary relevance, Pierce is working for the same group of “rogue’’ Nazis that the Cap tangled with in the 1940s (a distinction presumably aimed at not antagonizing the real-life descendants of mainstream Nazis).
As the star of “Three Days of the Condor’’ and “All the President’s Men’’ (who turned down the lead in 1977’s “Superman’’) could tell you, genuine political conspirators back in the day didn’t try to kill people in very public places and broad daylight, with dozens of vehicles and the entire membership of the stunt persons union.
The chief assassin is the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) of the title, who comes off as a standard-issue movie psychopath, despite an elaborate back story linking him to the Cap that’s revealed late in the story (it will come as no surprise to anyone who saw the first, and far more charming, “Captain America’’ movie).
New characters who will presumably have bigger roles in future “Captain America’ and “Avengers’’ movies are introduced at regular intervals, which tends to slow down a rather talky movie that’s singularly lacking in any kind of suspense.
The directors, who have worked in TV since their most recent feature (the delightfully quirky “Welcome to Colinwood’’) a dozen years ago, shoot most of the interiors in close-up, which doesn’t do Redford any favors. And they haven’t found any new ways to stage the clichéd scenes on their Marvel checklist — like Cap fighting his way out of an elevator filled with killers — that might make them memorable.
“Captain America: The Winter Soldier’’ does have its delightful throwaway moments — a room full of huge 1970s computers presided over by the digitized ghost of a long-dead Nazi (Toby Jones) and the rueful look on Redford’s face when his character realizes he’s going to have to terminate a beloved employee with extreme prejudice. At 136 minutes, it could have used a lot more of those moments.
The funniest/saddest line in the movie was certainly unintended, and has nothing to do with the plot: Natasha says she’s going to “call in some favors from Kiev.’’ Lotsa luck getting help from the besieged Ukraine now.