IN HEROES WE TRUST.
Captain America and Black Widow (Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson) are sent on a mission to liberate S.H.I.E.L.D. hostages, but soon find the entire organization threatened from all sides.
The filmmakers’ purpose was to fuse a 3D superhero movie with the trappings of 1970s paranoia thrillers, with Robert Redford serving as a bridge. An ingenious idea, and it gets off to a very entertaining start, with good location work in D.C., including an adrenaline-packed attack against S.H.I.E.L.D. boss Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Johansson also raises the temperature, but the new characters are less interesting.
A strictly formulaic finale fails to live up to everything that precedes it… but this is still more ambitious than most Marvel films.
2014-U.S. 136 min. Color. Widescreen. Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo. Screenplay: Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely. Cast: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Captain America), Scarlett Johansson (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow), Sebastian Stan (James Buchanan Barnes/Winter Soldier), Anthony Mackie, Cobie Smulders, Frank Grillo, Hayley Atwell, Jenny Agutter, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones… Garry Shandling. Voice of Gary Sinise. Cameos: Stan Lee, Elizabeth Olsen, Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Trivia: F. Gary Gray was considered for directing duties; Emilia Clarke, Felicity Jones and Anna Kendrick for a leading role. Followed by Captain America: Civil War (2016).
Last word: “I’ll never forget [producer] Kevin [Feige], when he introduced us at Comic-Con the first time, and he said, ‘You may not know who these guys are right now, but I guarantee after you see Winter Soldier you will.’ Look, we’ve done a lot of work that we’re very happy with in our careers, and it hasn’t spoken directly to what this movie is, but people who are in the industry who know what we’ve been up to behind the scenes know that we’ve been working ourselves towards something like this for awhile now. So it was a little bit of Kevin as a very, very savvy producer understanding who was in the right place to do a movie like this at the right time, and we found each other.” (Anthony Russo, IGN)
