Review: Captain America: Civil War (2016)
****
GENRE: Action / Adventure / Fantasy
DIRECTOR: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
CAST: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Chadwick Boseman, Emily VanCamp, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Tom Holland, Daniel Brühl
RUNTIME: 146΄
DISTRIBUTION: FEELGOOD
After the tragic, collateral damage of another Avenger’s salvation mission, multiple governments around the world decide to put in effect, through United Nations, the Anti-Hero Registration Act, in order to control super-heroes. An act that is backed by Iron-Man, but dismissed by Captain America. It doesn’t take long for the civil war to ignite...
This is not a perfect movie. It is not lacking shortcomings. And it gives you the right, if you have such an itch, to complain. For the recurring inability of Marvel, which sooner or later does everything else right, both on the big and the small («Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D», «Agent Carter», «Daredevil», «Jessica Jones») screen, to single out the… orbiting Johansson’s Black Widow and Renner’s Hawkeye as beings more substantial, more complete. One step forward has Joss Whedon urged them both in his Avengers: Age Of Ultron, giving them key roles in the narrative, as well as the progression of the action. Two steps back they are taken again here by the Russo brothers and the writers Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFelly. And if Widow’s ambivalence toward choosing a side at least makes sense and fits her typically subdued, cool nature, Hawkeye’s instant decision to come out of retirement and leave (even temporarily) his family behind to get involved in the war, is hardly explainable either by logic, or by emotion.
To grumble. For those who hastily beleaguered Peter Jackson for employing Fast Frame 3D in his trilogy of The Hobbit. Thus deterring its systematic use and leaving our eyes exposed to the annoying, tiresome blur that is left behind every (super)heroic movement, especially during every hand to hand combat. A blur that is present even in particularly meticulous 3D conversions as these of Marvel. And to whine. For the almost total shortage of originality at the – necessarily, competitively – spectacular action sequences, inevitably caused by the deafening barrage of comic heroes and stories that have engulfed pop culture. If you had the experience of the entitled «Leviathan», 13ου episode of «DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow» (DC that for the time being works wonders only on TV: «The Flash», «Arrow», «iZombie»), you will understand exactly what we mean, as during this Civil War’s battle at the airport you won’t be able to avoid the comparisons between Marvel’s Ant-Man and DC’s Atom…
Yes. This is not a perfect movie. It is however an honest, conscientious, entertaining, brave, mature movie. Honest, because neither denies nor betrays its genre. And succeeds in streaming striking, perspicuous and engaging from the eyes to the emotions, despite its 146’ running time and the solemn, controversial themes it deals with. Conscientious, since unlike similar spectacles that came before (i.e. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice) it more obviously than ever requires from its heroes to meet head on with the responsibility of their Messianic actions’ collateral damage. (You are free to make associations with the real, West’s… salvation bombings in Syria). Here, Captain America, Iron-Man and CO are held accountable not only for the loss of innocent lives in the opening scene of this film, but also that in Sokovia and New York during the first two Avengers films. Concurrently, the “big bad” of the story is not an omnipotent alien or a megalomaniac robot. It is rather a common man, who has lost everything and, suspended, he treads on the thin, sharp, painful and bloody line that separates justice from vengeance.
Entertaining as, on one hand, it never loses its humor (Scott Lang/Ant-Man hysterically shakes Steve Rogers/Cap’s hand like a fan going gaga), even at its most tragic moments (“I don’t care, he killed my mum”), whilst debating what differentiates a hero from vigilante, a messiah from a victimiser. And on the other, as it effectively, with broad, but spot-on strokes introduces two – one fresh and one brilliantly… redefined – new kids on the bloc: Boseman’s Black Panther, whose name speaks for itself and Spider-Man as rendered by the amazing youngster Holland (The Impossible) will make you... purr. Brave for it stubbornly refuses to pick a side, distinguish the good from the bad, come up with (easy) solutions, reconciliations and compromises or readily reach conclusions. On the contrary, from the very beginning, when unexpectedly is the clean-cut Cap who rebels and the spoiled brat Iron-Man who concedes, it insists on perceiving its heroes as irrevocably grey, flawed beings; on listening and appreciating the arguments of both; on paying attention to each side’s painful dilemmas, censoring neither (when in the heat of the battle one of the fighters goes down, like a falling angel, it is both the “friend” and “foe” who rush instinctively to his side); and on choosing as its action climax, not a CGI spectacle, but the quarrel between three friends and all their indescribably familiar motives and emotions.
Mature, because it constitutes another, fruitful and not trite, evolutionary step of the versatile, multifaceted and ever expanding franchise that is part of. It encourages an open-minded dialogue and, through it, flourishes in the heart and mind. It represents an unimaginably crucial parable of our turbulent, worryingly verging on separatism times, without however, even for a moment, digressing into patronising. It shrewdly conforms to the codes of its genre, but it also exceeds them and exists, generous, beyond it. And as its heroes and its audience, you and me, it is flawed. Yet capable for the best.
IS IT FOR ME?
No question about it if you are a friend and not a blind fanatic of the genre. One of the best and probably the most mature of Marvel’s films thus far, is directed to spectators with high I(ntelligence) and E(motional) Q(uotient), who don’t renounce entertaining, blockbuster cinema and appreciate fearless humor. And if the latter will be aware of and duly take pleasure in all its obvious or not qualities, the rest will simply have a blast.
This review was first published in Greek in Freecinema's film reviews section.
