--Steve Rogers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
"Hydra was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom."
--Arnim Zola, Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Sometimes called the Dark Knight of the MCU, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is by far the most competently made movie in its trilogy, and perhaps the most competently made movie of all of the films in the MCU's Phase Two. Touching upon a very significant subject, the story has more gravity than Captain America: The First Avenger, its plot radically altering the world inside the MCU as a whole--by the end the in-universe world is very different than it is at the beginning.
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Production Values
Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson offer some of their absolute best Marvel performances here, and, though Samuel L. Jackson's sarcastic Nick Fury and other actors and actresses often steal their scenes, the movie is ultimately about Captain America (Steve Rogers) and Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff). The comedic and serious sides of their personalities are on full display here. I love how Steve and Natasha are portrayed as friends--it can be deeply refreshing to see two attractive members of either gender develop a cinematic relationship with each other than has nothing to do with romance or sexuality. The only obstacle to their relationship is not unrequited romantic or sexual attraction, but the fact that the circumstances call for suspicion and skepticism. Robert Redford, Sebastian Stan, Cobie Smulders, and Anthony Mackie all deliver excellent performances as well, though they are background/supporting characters for the most part. The visuals are spectacular, even after four years. They complement the story, characters, and scope of the movie very well, holding up superbly thus far. Even though some of the set pieces are large and dramatic, this never undermines the effectiveness of the intimate, character-driven moments that appear all throughout the plot.
Story
Spoilers are below!
Steve Rogers, still adjusting to the modern world after decades of being frozen following his fight with Red Skull, meets Sam Wilson, who is soon to become the Falcon. As the world becomes more chaotic, the threats to its social health become fiercer, with Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. overseeing Project Insight: a project intended to preemptively kill threatening individuals. Fury finds himself pursued openly--on the streets--by people trying to take his life, and he is introduced to the powerful but elusive Winter Soldier, an enigmatic Hydra assassin.
A second assassination attempt seemingly kills him, Captain America and Black Widow hunting the truth about the situation. In an abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D. office, they discover that Hydra, a malevolent organization that worked with the Nazis, has survived into the present day and deeply infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. The consciousness of a scientist who helped Red Skull, Arnim Zola, was somehow uploaded to a computer system, from which Zola explains to Steve and Natasha how Hydra has been controlling the information seen by the public and injecting disorder into global affairs. The objective is minimizing the autonomy of individuals by generating so much chaos that people willingly surrender their freedom, as Hydra is strongly anti-liberty, for its founding members thought that humans cannot handle their own freedom.
Fury did not actually die, and Steve and Natasha reunite with him to form a plan to stop Project Insight. In a massive set piece involving multiple Helicarriers, Steve successfully prevents Project Insight from leading to the deaths of numerous people, yet he is forced to confront the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed Bucky Barnes--Steve's closest friend from the 1940s who seemingly died in action. Though the heroes dismantle the bulk of Hydra's presence in S.H.I.E.L.D., they also destroy a great part of S.H.I.E.L.D. itself. This leaves the world even more vulnerable than it was before the Hydra infiltration came to light, setting the stage for Age of Ultron.
Intellectual Content
At the core of the conflict in Winter Soldier is the subject of individual autonomy. Is personal freedom good? Is it possible to have both freedom and the security that protects that freedom at once? A government should never involve itself in activities that go beyond its obligations to its citizens (this is the foundation of political libertarianism: all unjust or unnecessary laws should be abolished), and monitoring most or all aspects of its citizens' lives is not something any government has an obligation to do. Winter Soldier is a story about how Steve Rogers shifts from the predominantly conservative mindset prevalent in his youth to a more libertarian one. Steve comes to realize just how invasive a non-libertarian government can become, his allegiances changing as the political landscape around him does. The corrupted S.H.I.E.L.D. goes beyond the obligation to protect citizens from actual threats by seeking to exterminate anticipated threats before they can even become troublesome, and Steve does not tolerate this. Punishing people before they commit an offense, as opposed to after, using the right methods is the only just way to manage a society.
Conclusion
One of the more unique MCU movies out of the 20 that have been released, Winter Soldier still maintains its own identity in a time when many Marvel films suffer from the protagonists having bland, interchangeable personalities--a problem distinctly absent from the film. The characterization is strong, the plot serpentine, and the thematic tone dark without descending to the wonderful bleakness of a story like that of Logan. It is one of the MCU's most balanced, well-crafted offerings, developing its characters while drawing attention to a rather serious issue that the modern world has found increasingly relevant to politics, and it still stands taller than many of its siblings.
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Content:
1. Violence: Like many other MCU films, very little about Winter Soldier is portrayed in a brutal way, although many of the fighting moves in it would shatter bones.
2. Profanity: Though fairly infrequent, some profanity does appear.
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