The Winter Soldier review, take 2

Take 1 having been written under the influence of an extraordinarily negative fellow critic.

Captain America The Winter Soldier does one thing utterly and totally brilliantly, and it really needs a name for this sort of thing.

(Spoilers)

It hands you one plot twist on a silver platter so that you can pat yourself on the back for getting ahead of the film and then get completely blindsided by the second plot twist.

Specifically: at the beginning of the film, Cap goes to a museum and sees an exhibit about him and his buds from the WWII days. There's a really long lingering shot of Bucky's picture as the narration reminds us that Bucky was the only one of them to "die." Recognize that as the infodump/recap of Cap 1 it is and wonder what's it doing it this film. Hrm. (Also the comic fans knew what was coming and anyone who knew Sebastian Stan was back knew as well.)

So you're sitting there smugly going I know who the Winter Soldier is and then Bam! HYDRA launches out from the shadows. I groused in the original review about this being a cop-out designed to not get the filmmakers droned to death for indicting Obama's NSA, but I have changed my mind. It's a great twist, I can't way to see it play out across the MCU. Look what it did for something middling like Agents of SHIELD and then wonder what it will do for Iron Man and, yes, further Cap entries.

I wanted to see Good Old 40s Boy Scout adapt to the Era of Big Brother. I got that. I got exactly that. My only mistake was in expecting it to be a comic book movie, because it patently wasn't. Oh, it had the guys in goofy costumes (ScarJo, PVC, never change it). But come on, "superhero movie." It comes loaded up/weighed down with expectations.

Moving the grade to A, until the DVD comes out and I get to scrutinize it all over again.