Monday 9 May 2016

Captain America: Civil War film review



Went to see this at the Leeds/Bradford Odeon on Saturday night with my family.


IMDB says: Political interference in the Avengers' activities causes a rift between former allies Captain America and Iron Man.

In this Anthony Russo (You, Me and Dupree, TVs Community) and Joe Russo (You, Me and Dupree, TVs Community) directed film, written by Christopher Markus (Thor 2: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier), Stephen McFeely (Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor 2: The Dark World), Mark Millar (comic book), Joe Simon (characters) and Jack Kirby (characters), Chris Evans (Snowpiercer, Fantastic Four) stars as Captain America.


Trailer

This time the Avengers, including Iron Man (Robert Downey Junior: Chef, Iron Man), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson: Lucy, Lost in Translation), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner: The Hurt Locker, American Hustle), Falcon (Anthony Mackie: The Hurt Locker, Million Dollar Baby), War Machine (Don Cheadle: Crash, Hotel Rwanda), Vision (Paul Bettany: Wimbledon, A Beautiful Mind), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen: Godzilla, Oldboy), Ant-Man (Paul Rudd: I Love You Man, The 40 Year Old Virgin) and newcomer Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman: 42, Get On Up), must choose sides to protect or capture The Winter Soldier aka Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan: The Martian, Black Swan).

Don Cheadle and Robert Downey Jr. in Captain America: Civil War (2016)

In this 'all action and not much storyline' Avengers movie, most of the one-liners and funny bits are taken up by the new wannabe Avenger, and new Spiderman, Tom Holland (Locke, The Impossible).  There was some great acting and it was a shame that the storyline did not give such exceptional actors much to work with, the main bad guy Zemo, the fantastic Daniel Brühl (Rush, The Bourne Ultimatum), and Crossbones (Frank Grillo: The Grey, Minority Report) in particular.  For the first third of the movie I was actually bored, which is unlike me as I am a huge superhero fan (and Marvel in particular), but things did not look up for me until the new characters were introduced, Black Panther and Spiderman (there were also some great scenes with Ant Man and Hawkeye, but few and far between).

One of the main problems for me apart from the lack of storyline and over-use of fighting, was Vision, if he is this all-knowing super being, how can he not just stop the whole thing (i.e. the fighting) and bring about World peace, let alone Avenger peace?  Having him 'distracted' by Scarlet Witch was too much of a cop out and emphasised the fact that most of the characters were so much window-dressing as they did not actually have that much to do other than hit each other.

But hey, it was world's better than Batman v Superman.



Trivia: Samuel L. Jackson was "surprised" to discover that Nick Fury would not be in the film after "the Russo Brothers told him he was." Executive Producer Nate Moore stated that Fury was not included "because he didn't add anything to the Civil War story they were telling." Tom Holland commented on how intimidated he was when he came to audition for Spider-Man, Robert Downey Junior took him aside and said, "Listen, I remember my screen test for Iron Man. I remember how terrified I was. Just think of it as an audition. It's nothing too scary. If you get it wrong, we'll just start again. No pressure." The film coincides with the 75th anniversary of Captain America. 2016 also marks the 10th anniversary of the original Civil War comic book and Black Panther's 50th anniversary.Iron Man orders Captain America to stay down, and Cap answers, "I could do this all day." This is the same answer he gave to a bully who was beating him up at the beginning of Captain America: The First Avenger (2011).

Tagline: Divided we fall.                                                                          6/10



#CaptainAmerica #CaptainAmericaCivilWar #CivilWar #CivilWarCaptainAmerica

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