CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS
Superhero sequel finds humanity in saving the world
Captain America wasn’t born to be subtle. Draped in stars and stripes from his immaculate, nationalist conception, Steve Rogers was transformed from ordinary weakling into Captain America for a patriotic purpose.
Humanity was on the brink of moral abandon as Hitler stormed Europe, making Steve’s mission to nix Nazis entirely noble. But now the world looks a lot different.
Villains are harder to spot in the globalized, corporatized world. It may look like patriotism is folk art and someone like Steve Rogers belongs in the Smithsonian.
So stovepipe hats off to screen- writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely for giving us a scene that shows exactly what this movie is really saying beneath its gleaming action-packed suit.
Somewhere through the first act, we see Steve tour his own exhibit at that very Smithsonian.
Lead actor Chris Evans wears the moment as well as he does the fancy suit in this sequel: He turns away with a sense of regret yet lingering purpose.
He wants to serve his country, but he’s still not too sure what this modern iteration of America really stands for. And nor do we — at least, not in this context.
In this comic book-spawned reality, the Western world has surrendered its personal freedoms to the military industrial complex in the name of national security.
But if humanity doesn’t act soon, we will all be held ransom by the corporate-run government that has a giant gun in the sky capable at the push of a button of killing people it deems a threat.
Steve Rogers can see what’s happening. But he’s just a quaint souvenir of times past. If he’s going to make a change, he needs some super friends. He finds them in former KGB agent Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and veteran Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), not to mention commander Nick Fury — played once more with sweet, wincing paranoia by Samuel L. Jackson.
All of these relationships find just enough depth to keep the dramatic side balanced with the end- less 3D action. But the dynamic between Johansson and Evans, and the small details that give the two actors just enough room to show their moves, help make this movie more than your average bucket of corn.
It doesn’t just wave the flag in our face and ask us to be awed. It forces Steve, and everyone around him, to question what freedom really means: Is it the core of a democratic ideal worth dying for, or a word fascists use as camouflage to exploit the public trust?
The performers ensure all the apocalyptic sparkle feels human. And thanks to their sense of committed purpose in making it personal, Captain America transcends patriotism and hits the universal.