Does the first episode fly?
After the buzzy What is this, exactly? phenomenon of “WandaVision,” episode one of Disney+’s second Marvel limited series, “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” gets right to work reassuring Marvel Cinematic Universe prisoners (sorry, “devoted fans”) that they’ll know what this is, exactly. Front to back. No arguments, no swerves.
Judging from a single episode, it’s “The Odd Couple” outfitted with a massively symbolic shield — Captain America’s — and a battle for who’s gonna pick it up and run with it. We’re on the “post-Avengers: Endgame” timeline. The five-year blip that erased, temporarily but painfully, half the planet’s inhabitants has led to a dark, uncertain time.
“The world’s broken,” says Don Cheadle’s James “Rhodey” Rhodes, speaking to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson aka The Falcon. They’re at a Smithsonian tribute to their late friend and fellow Avenger Steve Rogers. “Why didn’t you take up the mantle?” Rhodey asks Sam. Didn’t feel right, he answers. The way ultra-reliable, casually authoritative Mackie delivers rejoinders you can hear coming a mile off, you tend to buy them anyway.
Meantime, on the B side: Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), aka The Winter Soldier, has survived brainwashing, sinister cyborggy experiments, multiyear deep-freeze naps and a universe of angst. In the inaugural episode, we don’t see Mackie and Stan interact, but the trailer’s full of tetchy, quippy exchanges to come. Both appear to be candidates to succeed Captain America, though the series, as we learn, is grooming a thirdparty candidate in super
soldier U.S. Agent, played by Wyatt Russell.
“I just went from one fight to another for 90 years,” Barnes tells his therapist, which makes you wonder if “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier” will feel the same way. It opens with a large, long, rough fight, all right. Somewhere near Tunisian airspace, Sam/Falcon is tasked with retrieving somebody (doesn’t matter) (yet) (or maybe ever) abducted by terrorists known as the LAF. The extended aerial smackdown/dogfight does the job, and it’s reasonably expensive-looking effectswise, which explains the $150 million production budget.
Directed by Kari Skogland, who handled all six episodes, the early scenes glide efficiently from Tunisia to D.C. to Louisiana to Switzerland. Sam’s sister, Sarah (Adepero Oduye), is a gulf resident keen on selling the family fishing boat; Sam, a loving uncle to his sister’s kids, would rather Sarah keep the seafood business alive. The best, sharpest scene finds Sam and Sarah trying to secure a loan from a banker (Vince Pisani, the quintessence of weaseldom) who questions the
five-year gap in employment on Sam’s resume — Thanos finger-snap notwithstanding.
Did I like it? It’s OK, if you like being pelted by narrative Easter eggs (my least favorite gimmick these days) for 45 minutes. Soon enough, per the trailer, we’ll get around to Daniel Brühl (Baron Zemo, the driven adversary from “Captain America: Civil War”) and, as the theme song from “Gilligan’s Island” once put it, “the rest.”
Postscript: I have no use for zazzed-up, nervously accelerated digital camera work deployed for the hand-to-hand melees.
The technique is a cliched short-cut to actual excitement. The series, rated TV-14 (though garnering the equivalent of an R in some countries), leans on faux-grit and casually brutal realism to establish various antagonists’ degree of evil. It’s one way to go. And it’s as American as Captain America’s shield.