The man who has a secret has great
power, said Aristotle.
With great power comes great
responsibility, said Peter Parker’s Grandad.
A good man would prefer to be defeated
than to defeat injustice by evil means wrote Sallust, in his history of the 1st
c. BC Jugethone War)
In the latest Marvel movie, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Global
Security Organisation SHIELD has secretly developed a vastly powerful
intelligence gathering project – and the airborne hardware to act on that
intelligence and take out terrorists before they even know they are
terrorists. Pre-emptive
retaliation meets The Minority Report.
Captain America, who comes from a time when
it felt easier to tell good from evil, is profoundly uneasy with the moral and
ethical implications of this.
His previously unquestioning obedience begins to unravel. Maybe he would rather be
defeated than to defeat injustice by evil means. Like Lucian Fox in The Dark Knight he thinks too much information is dangerous, especially when allied
to irresistible power.
But when Captain America's loyalty to SHIELD is severely
tested and his very survival threatened who does he find alongside him? The Black Widow, the Russian
assassin, the member of the Avengers team he most distrusts. Like Edward Snowdon in order to survive
he has to learn to trust the
Russian. And all this before
he discovers that SHIELD has been penetrated and houses a subversive parasitic
enemy.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier takes to task the political reactions to the 9/11 Two Towers
disaster and the ongoing threat of terrorism, implicitly criticizing the
Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney axis, their Homeland Security program and the ongoing NSA/GCHQ ambition to
know everything about us in order to protect us. This is therefore a political movie, and
so Captain America, like Jason Bourne,
eventually falls into the murky waters of the Potomac, the river that
runs through Washington DC.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier gives its smaller cast of characters more room to breath than the
previous Avengers movies. Chris Evans, as Captain America is given the
opportunity to flex his acting chops as well as his pecs, and Andrew Mackie, as his new ‘wingman’ Sam, is given a much better role than
in the appalling Gangster Squad. Robert Redford has a chance to
subvert his (rather boring) good guy baggage, which he takes with relish. Scarlett Johansson may
sometimes need a stunt double, but she still looks as if she is perfectly
capable of the precise and acrobatic savagery with which the Black Widow
dispatches her adversaries, and we also learn a little more of her own inner
turmoil. And who
is the Winter Soldier?
He is played by Sebastian Stan, and although his character’s history is
initially shrouded in secrecy those who saw the first Captain America film will not be
puzzled for long.
The sibling directors, Anthony and Joe
Russo – who have been working TV
since their 2006 comedy hit You Me and Dupree -
show they can handle the demands of tent-pole action alongside more intimate
scenes. The design and music are
up to the expected Marvel standard.
The whole Marvel franchise is growing on
me. The previous – and
ongoing - high production values and artistic integrity of these productions,
alongside their refusal to take the easy route of camp self regard now also has
a political edge. What’s not to
like?
