For the week of September 9th, Disney and Marvel Studios are rolling out Captain America: The Winter Soldier on Blu-ray. Other than The Avengers, Captain America: The First Avenger might have been the most satisfying of Marvel's Phase One pictures – it had an Indiana Jones-esque sense of derring-do and fun, and Chris Evans' warm, noble portrayal of the title superhero was, in its own way, as iconic and perfectly calibrated as Robert Downey Jr.'s take on Tony Stark. It is very heartening to report, then, that The Winter Soldier not only bests all of Marvel's Phase Two output (an impressive roster that includes standouts such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Iron Man 3), but it might be the studio's best adventure period. Like Iron Man 3, the new film opens shortly after the fierce Manhattan battle that concluded The Avengers, but unlike Tony Stark, Steve Rogers isn't coping with a traumatic near-death experience – for Rogers, life is the problem, as the recently unfrozen WWII icon struggles to find his place in the 21th Century while running covert strike missions for S.H.I.E.L.D. Evans is so good at conveying the inner turmoil of this unstuck-in-time hero, and screenwriters Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely do such a nice job of sketching his attempts to connect with the people around him (the absurdly overqualified cast features Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Redford, Emily VanCamp, Frank Grillo, and Anthony Mackie) that The Winter Soldier would work as a fairly plotless character study, but Steve's ennui quickly gets overshadowed after he unwittingly discovers a massive conspiracy and is forced to go on the run to unravel it. From that moment on (which kicks off with a great Nick Fury-centric action sequence), The Winter Soldier barrels along like some inspired mix of The Bourne Identity and 3 Days of the Condor, and it's a credit to directors Anthony & Joe Russo (who are better known for their duties helming episodes of Community and Arrested Development) that the pulpy blockbuster elements mesh well with the more somber paranoid thriller beats: they get away with placing a tense elevator brawl and running gunfight alongside a delirious exposition dump that comes courtesy of an evil computer A.I. I have minor nitpicks with the film – the Winter Soldier himself gets too little screen-time to really factor as an important character, and the identity of the ultimate Big Bad will come as a surprise only if you've never seen Rush Hour, Minority Report, L.A. Confidential, or Witness - but they just don't matter when compared to everything that works, from Rogers' different types of equally charming buddy chemistry with both Johansson (someone give Black Widow her own spin-off movie already!) and Mackie (who steals every scene he's in, as is his wont), the full-impact action sequences, an absolutely perfect needle-drop of Marvin Gaye's "Trouble Man," to Marvel's willingness to detonate well-established sections of its movie universe for dramatic effect. We'd all complain about summer movies a whole lot less if they were as good as Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
In his Blu-ray review, Kenneth Brown called this film "a tense, dramatic conspiracy thriller that somehow makes its strangest comic-book elements work wonders, is a masterfully conceived and executed sequel that takes Captain America - and, along with Guardians [of the Galaxy], the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe - in a bold, exciting direction. Both are outstanding films. Both boast astonishing confidence, production design, action, and visual effects. Both are terrific fun. Both represent a brave new world for comic-book movies. And each one for completely different reasons. Which is Marvel's crowning achievement? How do you even compare the two? Answer: you don't. Other than ranking the films by personal preference, it's a fool's errand to pit Cap, Black Widow and Falcon against Star Lord, Gamora, Drax, Rocket, and Groot. You sit back, think to yourself it's good to be a geek, soak it all in, and wait for the inevitable Avengers crossover. Love 'em both. Watch both of 'em over and over and over again. Enjoy each one on its own terms. So as much as the conversation of late has been dominated by 'which Marvel movie wins?,' let's just focus on The Winter Soldier. More than a gripping comic-book film, it's a gripping film. No small feat considering all the superheroes, inhuman action, indestructible shields, sentient computers, secret organizations, future tech, flying fortresses, and memory- wiped, cryogenically frozen, cybernetically enhanced assassins. Captain America: The Winter Soldier is, hands down, one of the year's best blockbusters."
Captain America: The Winter Soldier is so good it makes other programs better. Case in point: the flawed Marvel/ABC TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. To say that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. went through some growing pains would be a huge understatement; the first half of this action procedural – which finds the mysteriously resurrected Agent Coulson (the invaluable Clark Gregg) leading a ragtag group (is there any other type?) of S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives on dangerous global missions – plodded along, with uninvolving Bad-Guys-of-the-Week vying with studio-lot action scenes for Least Compelling TV Material. It didn't help either that outside of Gregg's unflappable Coulson and Ming-Na Wen's badass military pilot Melinda May, the cast wasn't capable of elevating this rote content, with the other protagonists coming across like sentient drywall (Brett Dalton's dull, dull Agent Grant Ward) or whiny kids playing dress-up (Chloe Bennet's perky hacker – as in The Strain, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. propagates the cliché of the 90-lb. hacker with perfect teeth and gorgeous skin – or Iain De Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge's gibbering Fitz/Simmons pairing). As a children's show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was perfectly acceptable in the early goings, but it certainly didn't bear much adult scrutiny, especially for a show with the imprimatur of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly mastermind Joss Whedon (outside of the pilot, Whedon's influence on the show is minimal, and his absence is keenly felt). Yet thanks to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. begins to dramatically right its course in the second half – the massive development that concludes the movie raises the stakes in a big way for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. That means we get a menacing villain (the Clairvoyant) and actual stakes that test the characters, and the actors respond in kind. Bennet gets far less obnoxious by the first season's end, De Caestecker and Henstridge turn from quirky "types" into the heart of the show, and Dalton becomes interesting in much the same way that Whedon redeemed David Boreanaz's initially bland Angel on Buffy. Plus, the second half makes time for great guest-star turns from Patton Oswalt and Bill Paxton, and their presence alone would improve things by a few degrees. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., delivers in the ending, and if the series can continue this upward trajectory in the second season, we're all in for a treat.
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing Brick Mansions. The main reason to pay attention to this hyperkinetic thriller is because it features one of the last completed performances from the late Paul Walker (he died before the end of principal photography for Fast & Furious 7); the actor stars as Damien Collier, an undercover cop who reluctantly agrees to infiltrate Detroit's most dangerous housing project in order to stop a terrorist bombing. Unlike Walker's more nuanced work in 2006's Running Scared or last year's Hurricane Katrina drama Hours, Damien is a far more stereotypical protagonist, brave and dogged and gently perplexed (not unlike Walker's Brian O'Connor in the Fast & Furious movies, actually), but the lack of character richness doesn't really hamper the film. Whatever his limitations were as an actor, Walker exceled at playing tough but noble ciphers, and he makes Damien far more engaging than he should be, handling the plot's melodramatic twists and the many action scenes with aplomb. Ironically, Walker's grim fate lends this project more prestige than it deserves. Besides Walker's presence, the only noteworthy thing about Brick Mansions is that it's a remake of the cult French actioner District B13, right down to the film's other leading man (David Belle, whose Leito from that earlier movie is now called Lino) and the carbon-copy script (District B13 was written by Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri, while Brick Mansions was written by Besson and his Taken collaborator Robert Mark Kamen). The difference is, Brick Mansions has definitely passed its expiration date. District B13 was just as ludicrous narratively, but that didn't matter. What did were the thrilling Parkour stunts, which director Pierre Morel was able to capture in thrilling long takes without the use of obvious stuntmen: Belle is one of the founders of Parkour, and his co-star Cyril Raffaelli (who Walker replaces in Brick Mansions) is also an experienced martial artist and fight choreographer. Watching Belle and Raffaelli do so many of their own stunts put most traditional Hollywood action blockbusters to shame, but unfortunately, that's exactly what Brick Mansions is. Its director, Camille Delamarre, keeps goosing the mayhem with quick cuts and CGI; while I'm not surprised that he used these devices to protect Walker and RZA (who's very enjoyable as the film's villain), it's frustrating to see Belle's physical performance chopped-up and distorted. Because of Walker's involvement, it's impossible to dismiss Brick Mansions outright, but in all other instances, this would be a textbook case of "The Original Was Better" Syndrome.
Of Brick Mansions, Jeffrey Kauffman writes that "When Belle is on screen and moving through some incredibly complex displays of gymnastics, Brick Mansions almost seethes with a feral energy that is hard to deny. Unfortunately, when the film tries to deal with narrative issues, the runner stumbles, so to speak, and dramatically this film falls pretty flat. Fans of Paul Walker will no doubt flock to see this film for the chance to see the star one last time, but sadly even Walker's innate charisma can't do much with the role of Damien. The star also seems oddly physically maladroit, at least when paired with Belle, who has an almost feline grace in simple movements, let alone some of the truly amazing parkour stunts on display. The film becomes so hackneyed after a while, saddling Damien with a melodramatic backstory that of course plays into the whole saga of Brick Mansions and attempts at urban redevelopment. Tentative romantic interests also enter the fray, when Lino's girlfriend becomes (of course) a damsel in distress, taken hostage by the bad guys. It's all so resolutely formulaic that even high flying parkour sequences can't ultimately lift this film out of its doldrums."
In a somewhat morbid coincidence, another film from another recently deceased actor streets on Tuesday; the crime drama God's Pocket, which features one of Philip Seymour Hoffman's last completed performances. The feature-film directorial debut of Mad Men star John Slattery, this adaptation of Pete Dexter's novel focuses on a group of losers and scoundrels living in a Philadelphia suburb (the "God's Pocket" of the title); chief among these is Mickey (Hoffman), a truck driver and small-time gambler whose numerous problems grow exponentially more complicated when his hateful stepson (Caleb Landry Jones) dies in a workplace accident. Mickey's wife (Slattery's Mad Men co-star Christina Hendricks, effectively de-glammed and heartbreaking) suspects foul play and demands that Mickey find the truth, but Slattery has no desire to turn the proceedings into some kind of whodunit or revenge picture. God's Pocket is, improbably, a comedy of sorts, albeit a pitch-black one: it becomes very clear early on why Jones was killed, and his death turns into another of the many cosmic misfortunes that Mickey must endure, including a beyond-poor showing at the track, his inept attempts at fencing stolen meat, and a humiliating feud with Eddie Marsan's undertaker. Viewed under the specter of Hoffman's own death, God's Pocket can take on almost more melancholy than it can bear. As dark as God's Pocket would normally be, it's so much harder to watch Mickey sullenly flail against an uncaring and hateful world with the knowledge of the tragic circumstances surrounding the actor. However, Hoffman is so predictably brilliant that his performance justifies some of that psychic disturbance. Sporting a distended paunch and sallow, yellow skin (along with his work in Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man, I don't know how much of his physical appearance stems from the character or from the fact that he filmed both movies while relapsing back into substance abuse), Hoffman hollows Mickey out from the jump, but there's something there that keeps him going – regardless of how futile his struggles are, Mickey keeps pushing against them, and Hoffman finds a kind of heroism there, one that runs through the resplendently grimy performances of a cast that also includes Richard Jenkins, The Wire veterans Peter Gerety & Domenick Lombardozzi, and the great John Turturro, who proves a great foil for Hoffman as his even dimmer sidekick. It helps, too, that the movie around him is more than above average. Slattery has a great eye for the dilapidated Philly milieu, and his mix of gallows' humor and grit recalls Andrew Dominik's underrated 2012 satire Killing Them Softly. God's Pocket isn't on the same level as Hoffman's Synecdoche, New York or The Master (more and more, those two feel like the ones he'll be remembered for), but it's a striking effort all around, and a potent reminder of how Hoffman could make the most brutal material visceral and affecting.
Finally, from Kino Video comes an HD version of Richard Lester's great Juggernaut. A quick glimpse at the setup, and you could be forgiven for thinking Lester, the puckish, brilliant mind behind A Hard Day's Night and the delightful 1974 version of The Three Musketeers, was playing it safe (and boring). His film sounds like calculated attempt to cash in on the '70s disaster-movie craze; like some unholy mélange of The Poseidon Adventure and Two-Minute Warning, Lester's film puts the passengers on a high-end luxury cruise under the combined pressures of both natural disasters and a terrorist mastermind (The Elephant Man's Freddie Jones, whose motivations are one of Juggernaut's biggest surprises) threatening to blow up the ship if his demands aren't met. Lester even concedes to the genre with the use of a de rigueur star-studded cast that includes Omar Sharif, Richard Harris, Roy Kinnear, David Hemmings, Ian Holm, Shirley Knight, and a very young Anthony Hopkins. How funny, then, that Juggernaut works so well, both in terms of how it fulfills the genre's objectives and how it subtly tweaks them. As silly as it may seem, the combination of bad weather and terrorist menace works like gangbusters. Lester keeps turning the screws on the audiences, especially with the reveal that the bombs are very sensitive to any outside turbulence (shades of Henri-Georges Clouzot's great The Wages of Fear), and he works in some brilliant suspense setpieces through Harris and Hemmings' desperate attempts to disarm the bombs - Lester derives so much tension from alternating close-ups of his heroes' sweaty faces and the complicated inner-workings of the bombs (I wouldn't be surprised if Kathryn Bigelow studied these sequences closely when she was prepping for The Hurt Locker). If all Juggernaut had going for it were the ace disaster scenes, it would be the masterwork of the (admittedly disreputable) genre, but Lester goes one step further in the periphery. There's a rich vein of mordant comedy running parallel to the drama, whether it's the snide comments from the passengers as their situation worsens or Harris' surprisingly fatalistic bomb expert, and it acts as a kind of postmodern commentary on these action epics, an acknowledgment that Lester thinks they're as silly as we do.