Security State Superheroes

THE CLASSIC COMIC book hero is given a post-WikiLeaks spin in the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. He realizes that he is being asked to participate in the extrajudicial killing of people whom a magic formula has decided might threaten the established order in the future. It’s intriguing that even Nick Fury, one of Captain America’s “bosses” at the superhero super-agency S.H.I.E.L.D. (lines of authority are never particularly clear when super powers are in play), almost goes along with this.

To build a new world, sometimes you have to tear the old one down, says character Alexander Pierce, played by Robert Redford in a role that both echoes and inverts the ones he often took in the ’70s—where, in films such as All the President’s Men and Three Days of the Condor, he fought the system from within for good. This time Redford’s having fun as a bad guy, while Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) is the golden boy flirting with the audience and inviting us into his subversive politics (indeed the first words he speaks—the first words of the movie—are “on your left”).

So The Winter Soldier is striving for far more than your typical comic book movie and has been clearly influenced by the Dark Knighttrilogy in aiming for philosophical depth. There are interesting ideas here—S.H.I.E.L.D. being part of the problem and the character Winter Soldier’s name evoking the 1972 documentary Winter Soldier about Vietnam vets expressing regret. There are fun bits of business with Steve Rogers’ difficulties in adjusting to the contemporary world (such as the dawning reality that Star Wars andStar Trek are different things). And there’s real character development, especially in Rogers’ interactions with the Black Widow.

However, the action is not particularly well handled, and it eventually becomes monotonous—with one exception: The death of one character carries some emotional heft and a sense of impact. That might be why the rest of the action didn’t really work for me—the directors may actually be committed enough to facing the effects of violence that it’s difficult for them to have much fun with it.

Another go-round at the script might have taken it beyond playing at ideas to really exploring them—the comparisons with ’70s-style thrillers are purely thematic, not matched by craft or tone. But for a comic book film to be willing to look at the fact that it’s harder to tell who’s right and who’s wrong than a patriotic Saturday Evening Post cover would suggest is refreshing—and yet another sign that it’s getting easier to treat weighty things in otherwise light containers.