Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame To Kill For

It's "Just Another Saturday Night" and Saturday's are usually "Take Out the Trash" Day...

 

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame To Kill For (Robert Rodriguez, Frank Miller, 2014) Frank Miller became the darling of comic-book fans by bringing a mature, gritty, often brutal, sometimes mystical approach to iconic comic-book heroes—specifically Marvel's Daredevil and DC's Batman—when he got the chance to write them and mark them with a stamp of more than just india ink. He could be radically forthright in his interpretations, and for young men—and women—enamored of four-color literature (people who read comic books and take them seriously), he became one of the top-tier of comic-creators.

But, writing for "Daredevil" and "Batman", owned by corporate interests who were also interested in the longevity of the character and its marketability for selling T-shirts and toys—sorry, action figures—there was only so much creative lee-way he was allowed. Creating his own works—like the Samurai series "Ronin" or his spartan graphic novel about the Spartans, "300," let his talents bloom full-flower. His "Sin City" series let him tackle the noirish aspects of pulp novels, filled with roughneck men and soft women who were hard as nails, while employing a radical design sense of dark pages (rather than the usual white) blasted by white highlights of louvered light with just a dash of color. Miller allowed his drawing to become blocky and stark, emphasizing the filmic frame, rather than graphic details. And he bleached the traditional four colors of comics—just as the industry was benefiting from more sophisticated color printing—to a monochromatic night-scape (something artist Jim Steranko had used to great effect in his graphic novel "Chandler: Red Tide").

Miller's influence could be seen when the Batman character returned to the screen under Tim Burton's direction (but, more especially when Zack Snyder was allowed to tinker with the character later), and he was approached to do script-work, turning out the screenplays for Robocop 2 and Robocop 3. His graphic novels started to make their way to film and he was approached by Robert Rodriguez to script a film version of his "Sin City" series, to which he was added as co-director as the resulting film took so many cues from the original work—Rodriguez was even using the graphic novels as story-boards.

That movie, Sin City, was a success, making a lot of money and revived the careers of a lot of people, including Mickey Rourke, who was encased in so much prosthetics to play the character of "Marv", but it didn't distract from his acting (he even did press interviews in the make-up which was...weird). Sin City looked different. It felt different. Plus, there was the eerie feeling that you were watching a comic-book literally come to life—the same impression evoked by Zack Snyder's adaptation of Miller's 300—that the film was merely filling in the missing parts of the "money shots" displayed in the comics. But, it wasn't a movie you could take seriously—you needed a jaded humor to appreciate that it was over-the-top satire and not really reflective of the noir genre Miller wanted to ape. The dialogue was bad, clipped less from the gritted-teeth jargon of B-movie writing and more like Spillane spillage. What movie was it that said "the cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter?"*  

Sin City (both the books and film) should be so lucky. It's a distillation of Hemingway minimalism and thug-mumbling, with punch-lines of nihilism that are supposed to be funny, but ultimately are just for an audience so low on Gustav Hasford's "phony tough and crazy brave" index that they think it's sophisticated. A.O. Scott had it right when he said that Sin City "offers sensation without feeling, death without grief, sin without guilt, and, ultimately, novelty without surprise." That's what they would call in these things "a head shot"—couldn't've been put better.

The financial success of the first Sin City led to a sequel of sorts—released nine years after the first one—featuring two original Miller tales as well as adapting his short story "Just Another Saturday Night", as well as the tale the film is titled for, "A Dame To Kill For".

The first film was a true anthology, with one of the stories being split up for a final resolution at the end. A Dame To Kill For jumps around, allowing time to pass for the healing of wounds and grudges to fester. The film also brings back characters from the first film—forget the fact that they might have died!—to continue stories or serve as prequels to the previous film.

The first story is one of Miller's shorter stories (from "Dark Horse Comics Presents") called "Just Another Saturday Night" in which his character "Marv" (Mickey Rourke) wakes up from an auto accident on the edge of town with no idea how he got there. This has to be an early tale—a prequel, if you will—because if you've seen the first Sin City movie, Marv was executed in it...by the electric chair.

The second story, "A Long Bad Night" stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Johnny, a cocky gambler who comes into town for a big score with under-pinned reasons. He goes to what seems to be the only bar in town—Kadie's Place, where all the Sin City regulars hang out, like Marv, and where Nancy Callahan (Jessica Alba) dances. But, like everything in Sin City, it has a hidden side (given everybody's instincts one would think nothing would be hidden in that burg).

 

Senator Roark (Powers Boothe) arrives at Kadie's for the poker game in the back room—just missing being plugged by a vengeful-but-chicken Nancy for the death of her guardian angel, Hartigan (Bruce Willis—his character died in the last movie, but this is based on a comic book and nobody really dies in comics, even ones written by Frank Miller). Johnny, who's had a string of wins on the slots, uses one of the waitresses, Marcie (Julia Garner) to buy in on the game. 

 

He cleans out the Senator—who, of course, has a reputation and everybody named Roark in Sin City is not only a psychopath but a corrupt psychopath. With Roark seething, Johnny is advised by the police lieutenant in the game to blow Sin City and pronto, but, as nobody in town seems to have any sense whatsoever, Johnny takes Marcie and they decide to have a night on the town. It should be noted that, as this is an original Miller story for the movie, Rodriguez isn't depending on Miller's comics for story-boarding and shot-lists, but delves into something Miller doesn't do in his graphic work, which is to resort to surrealism.** It causes a bit of a disconnect when it happens, like suddenly a musical sequence pops into a kitchen-sink drama. Yes, it's a transition device, but it's something that Miller never resorted to, short of impossible acrobatics and virtiginous angles.

As soon as you can say the words "predictably obvious" Johnny is attacked in town by Roark's goons, which he manages to dispatch and tells Marcie he'll hook up with her later at a hotel. But, before he can high-tail it to safety, he's manhandled into Roark's limousine where his winnings are stolen, his fingers broken and he's left in the street with an added bullet in his leg and Roark telling him he's his bastard-son ringing in his ears. Johnny swears revenge because that's the chief economic product in Sin City. Fade to monochromatic black.

Cut to "A Dame To Kill For" featuring Josh Brolin as Dwight McCarthy (played by Clive Owen in the "The Big Fat Kill" in the first Sin City movie and Dame is a prequel to that story). Dwight is sober now, a private detective, and after a late-night rescue of a hooker (Juno Temple) from her corporate lover (Ray Liotta), he is contacted by an old flame Ava Lord (Eva Green) asking to meet him at Kadie's Place (natch!) to tell him that the fat-cat (quite literally) she left him for years a go is a violent abuser and that she now fears for her life. Dwight is non-committal, but he's an addict (isn't he?), so he can't help but go back to the Lord compound to see what he can do about her situation. What he spies doesn't tell him anything about abuse—Ava is swimming nude, obviously not showing any bruises and contusions—but, investigating further, he's beat up and tossed off the Lord property.

 

He goes home only to find a naked Ava in his bed. And, as Sin City people, apparently can't feel pain, he succumbs and the two frantically make love, despite his not trusting her and being beat up within an inch of his life. 

 

Another thing: With "A Dame To Kill For" Miller began experimenting with how much nudity he could get away with in his comics, usually with his by-now draping shadows, which, when Rodriguez replicates it for the screen, merely comes off as slightly ridiculous, along the lines of an Austin Powers "hide-the-wiener" sequence. Things are exposed, alright, but exposed as juvenile and puerile.

Yeah, yeah...I kvetch about the nudity, but I put these up...(for illustrative purposes, of course!)

And I might get a couple of extra puerile "clicks" for it.

Any after-glow he might have is interrupted by the Lord chauffeur-bodyguard Manute (Dennis Haysbert, replacing Michael Clarke Duncan, who had died in the 7-year lag between producing Sin City and Sin City: A Dame To Kill For) who beats Dwight up and tosses him out the window. So, Dwight has been beaten up twice over this woman—anybody detecting a flat learning curve?

Dwight's determined to save Ava, so he teams up with Marv (hey, it's a small town...) to strike the Lord compound and get her out, and although a fair amount of wet-work is done, the results are not optimum—Dwight ends up falling out another window after a few bullets to the body—and one to the face. Marv scoops up what's left and takes him back the detectives Old Town haunts, where he is tended to by a gang of assassin-hookers led by another old flame (Rosario Dawson) and the very dangerous ninja-assassin Miho (Jamie Chung), who heel his wounds and do some reconstructive surgery, presumably to help him look more like Clive Owen. The instruments probably won't need to be sharp as Dwight isn't that sharp himself, planning on making one more excursion to Lord Manor after his recuperation. The girls evidently don't do brain transplants...or extensive therapy.

 Here's another "film noir quote" for you: "So many guns. So few brains."***

Okay, enough about "A Dame To Kill For". Once enough people are pushing black-and-white daisies in that one, Rodriguez and Miller pick up the "Long, Bad Night" story...

Johnny, probably reading a Yelp! review of the reconstructive surgery-hookers, goes to see another saw-bones (Christopher Lloyd), a heroin addict, who resets Johnny's fingers (not sure why, as he presumably can look at his cards one-handed—it's not like he's a pool-hustler or anything) and sets out to get his revenge on his legitimately illegitimate Dad, the Senator. Absolutely busted, Johnny borrows a single dollar from a waitress (Lady Gaga...LADY GA-GA!?) and repeats the strategy that got him into the poker game at Kadie's...and cleans the Senator out...again. So...dear old Daddy shoots him in the head. End of story. We waited through the peek-a-boo idiocy of "A Dame To Kill For" to get this?

Yeah. But, it ain't over. There's still "Nancy's Last Dance"—remember the stripper at Kadie's...Jessica Alba/Bruce Willis...didn't shoot the Senator? Sounds like there's a revenge story going wasting. Can't have that.

Nancy decides to go after the Senator after spiraling into depression and drink and giving herself a bad hair-cut, all the time being watched over by the ghost of Hartigan...

Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Isn't "Sin City"—the concept—derived from the hard-scrabble reality of B-movies and pulp-books? Aren't they supposed to be rooted in the American Promise Unfulfilled, where the well-intentioned are driven to desperation due to the economic inequities that reward the retention of wealth by any means necessary, while the principled person "doing the right thing" can't even catch a break? Isn't the basis of these things the "Reality-Is-A-Bitch" principle (if you can call it that)?

And we got a ghost? What the Hell?

I'll go out on the shakiest limb—Stanley Kubrick once said that his version of "The Shining" couldn't be depressing because it implied the existence of an after-life. Right? It doesn't all end with death. We go on. There is no such thing as extinction. Even a BAD after-life is better than no after-life at all. You get a do-over. Another chance. You don't get "second chances" in film-noir unless "the other guy" is a sucker. And you don't wake up from "The Big Sleep" that's what makes it so bad. Death eliminates Hope...and the near-occasion of fooling yourself.

And yet, here's Frank Miller going all-Shirley Jackson on us. What a bunch a' hooey.

Or...maybe they just wanted Willis back, however implausibly, to boost audience recognition and as a box office draw. Talk about "hope". Didn't work, though; Sin City: A Dame to Kill For was an aesthetic failure, a critical failure, and a box office failure, the full negative-Hat Trick.

There's only so many times you can go to the well, when it's basically a dry hole. It's a parody. It's like telling the same joke twice in a row. Don't expect the same results both times. Resurrect all the characters you want; all you're showing is that you've run out of ideas.

One thing you can say, for sure, about Sin City: They've got a hell of a recycling center.

* Dashiell Hammett wrote it for "The Maltese Falcon." I've read everything Hammett ever wrote. He knew he was writing trash, but, by god, he made sure it was the BEST trash, and elevated the genre.

** Although he would when he was directing his film of The Spirit.

 

*** Yeah, that's Raymond Chandler from "The Big Sleep"

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (aka دختری در شب تنها به خانه می‌رود)(Ana Lily Amirpour, 2014) Darkness falls on Bad City in Iran, an industry town surrounded by pumping oil derricks and refineries.

Down one of the dilapidated streets an old man and heroin addict (Marshall Manesh) is weaving down the street. He doesn't notice that across from him a figure is matching him step for step—a woman (Sheila Vand) in a black chador. But, when he stops, she stops. He turns to face her, and she parrots the move, staring at him. Unnerved, he turns and continues down the street and the split-second he does, so does she.  He stops again, and without even glancing his way, she stops also. They turn and face each other again. He asks her what she wants and there is no answer, just the stare. He raises his arm the direction he's going. And, as he watches, she raises a cloaked arm in the same direction.

 

He starts to run down the street.

Already you're unnerved, but the wordless interplay between the two night-crawlers only raises the hackles a couple more centimeters as you anticipate what could happen next. Director Ana Lily Amirpour, expanding her short film of the same title, always keeps you guessing. Words are few—and spoken in Persian—but the wide-angle black-and-white visuals provided by Lyle Vincent tell you all you need to know and sometimes those shots have a pulsating frisson that will recall a Fellini landscape, a monster movie, or the French new wave by means of James Dean. The pictures hold you in thrall like the stare of a corpse.

Welcome to A Girl Walks Home Along at Night, self-described as "The first Iranian vampire spaghetti western." As a description, that's a little "flip" but it's also not enough, limiting the breadth of what the movie is. Sure, the widescreen shots put you in mind of Sergio Leone and one sequence sounds like it could have been scored by a blaring Ennio Morricone arena trumpet. But, Amirpour has taken the blasted landscapes of Italian neo-realism and combined it with German expressionism in a surreal stew of high-contrast images that seem to shimmer on the screen.

Just the title sets off tension. Girls do not walk home alone at night under sharia law, and if they do, something is very wrong, even desperate. Women travel in groups, accompanied as there is strength in numbers. Apparently, that's not required in "Bad City", where bodies are carried to a mass dumping ground just off the highway.

We meet Arash (Arash Marandi), who is the son of that wasted father in the second paragraph. Mom's dead (or run away) and Dad is addicted to heroin and good-for-nothing. His long-suffering son has to pay for dad's "medicine" and the debts to the local pusher-pimp (Dominic Rains) have resulted in the dealer taking Arash's prized 1957 Ford Thunderbird. The kid does odd-jobs for the rich and powerful oil families like gardening and minor home repair, but it's not enough to feed Dad's habit, and he's looking to scratch out a better life for himself. Getting himself a cat is the first thing.

But, unknown to Arash, his path is going to cross with "The Girl" (Vand), who is none other than a vampire in the desert. The Girl looks young, but judging by the posters on her wall, she's been playing tunes on her old record player since before the 1970's. At night, she goes on the prowl, doing "bad" things to "bad" people—men for the most part as one would think. At one point, she accosts a young boy and repeatedly asks him if he's a good boy, and then warns him of the unspeakable things she'll do to him if he isn't. She'll be watching. It's no wonder he runs off without his skate board. The Girl takes it; the prowling can go a lot faster. And the visual of her coasting down the street, her chardor flying behind her, has definite vampire similarities.

How about the vampirism? Well, it's nail-biting up to the second knuckle. Just as Aminpour takes her time in scenes letting them play out at a deliberate (but natural) pace, the vampire attacks happen all of a rush, ramp-edited to a super-natural level. The dread and presence of dread are all creatively handled by a subtle, itchy sound design and score, which at times feel indistinguishable from each other. And the addition of pop songs only adds to verisimilitude rather than distractions.

It's a tense, sometimes tender, saga of striking back against oppression...of all kinds. And one can only wonder—as one does throughout the entire movie—what happens next?

Love & Mercy

Rock Me, Amadeus
or
Bravo Vibrato (Good and Bad, Heroes and Villains)

The other night I was casting around looking for something—anything—on television and landed on a PBS fund-raising version of "SoundStage" featuring "Brain Wilson and Friends," in conjunction with the release of his new album "No Pier Pressure" (heh...the promo is below) and the opening vocal harmony ("Our Prayer" from "Smile") raised the hairs on the back of my neck. It had the "Beach Boys" sound of blended harmonies, but had a melancholy, respectful air that moves the soul, a heady miasma of nostalgia and renewal. It's a revelation. Wilson, back in the time of "The Beach Boys," had far more "reach" than his fellow band-mates, who might have been content with surfing and car songs. But, while they were out on tour protecting the brand, recycling their hits over and over, Wilson moved beyond singer-songwriter and became what he was unofficially, anyway: producer. It was Wilson who came up with those "pet" sounds, odd combinations of instruments and timbres with their bizarre harmonics...that worked. It was revolutionary stuff, but had a childhood relatability that invited you in and imprinted themselves in your mind. His songs never go away...from the mind, from the heart, leavened with a look backwards, of nostalgia, upbeat still, but with grace-notes of regret.

Wilson is our Mozart—if Mozart had written about California beaches, girls and bikinis (which I'm sure he would have if he was ever made aware of them). Wilson's music was always several cuts above the standard "Beach Boys" fare, as his songs were fueled by serotonin, as opposed to testosterone. There was ambition in his songs, in the conception and production of them, ambitions that might not have been accepted in the pop marketplace of the '60's. But that is speculation. After the disappointing sales of his produced "Pet Sounds" album, (rebounded by the #1 hit status of the first release ("Good Vibrations") from their in-production album "Smile," band dissension, nervous record exec's and Wilson's own building insecurities scuttled what was to be the band's (and Wilson's) most ambitious album. For Brian Wilson, it led to creative roadblocks and a deep-ended wipe-out into a depression that he would not emerge from for years.

Wilson's story of his fall into and rise out of that depression is the make-up of Love & Mercy, directed by Bill Pohlad (he's only directed one other feature) and written by Oren Moverman, who also wrote I'm Not There, the episodic Todd Haynes film "about" Bob Dylan, where different actors played aspects of the singer. A simplified version of the same approach is done in Love & Mercy, where Paul Dano plays Wilson pre-breakdown and John Cusack plays him post-breakdown. The results are mixed. But, one thing that is for certain is the eerie way Dano nails Brian Wilson in the heady days of The Beach Boys' success in the 1960's and his subsequent troubles. Dano resembles Wilson, he sounds like him, and captures the puppy-dog optimism of Wilson that percolated through his early songs and melodies, that could easily be shattered in a family crisis, which was inevitable as most of his band-mates were brothers or cousins, his father was their manager and estranged from the boys' mother.  

Director Pohlad changes his style in the two movie sections, as well. The Dano segments switch from drama then zip to home-movie vignettes, like a Richard Lester movie. Cusack's segments are much more straight-forward and have far less energy, except from the fireworks provided by the actors—except Cusack. His Brian Wilson is a bit like a sad-eyed automaton, not entirely the actor's fault as Wilson at the time was being heavily medicated (more about that later), but it creates a fissure in the film that ultimately works against it—the segments post-"Smile" with Cusack just aren't as successful as the parts with Dano.

Evidently, there was a conscious decision between Dano and Cusack to not compare notes after their meetings with Wilson and their impressions of him; the actors playing Dylan in I'm Not There didn't confer, either, but the kaleidoscopic Dylan segments in that film aren't connected in any way—not in time, space, or (for that matter) dimension. Love & Mercy no matter its editing dynamic (in this case, going back and forth in time) is still a linear story—the artist went from here to there—so the two actors, so distinctive in look and style, make for an emotional disconnect. That they are two different stories in the same life—Brian's falling into depression, pre-"Smile"—and his rise out of it, offers no balm in that discomfort, it only enhances it. Having a different actor resolve the conflicts of the other leaves a feeling of a story only half-finished.

Cusack's part of the story is the one that is the most heroic, despite that Cusack is passive throughout (and you don't believe he could play, let alone compose, a lick of music). The purchase of a new car puts him in the orbit of car-dealer Melinda Ledbetter (Elizabeth Banks) who doesn't know he's "Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys" (as he will later be introduced)—of course not, he doesn't look a thing like Paul Dano. He's just a guy buying a car, albeit one who leaves a note on her business card saying "Lonely. Scared. Frightened." Before Banks can express her surprise by opening her mouth and blinking twice, into the showroom walks Brian's "minders," as well as Dr. Eugene Landy (played with a glowering malice by Paul Giamatti, acting on all thrusters), who smiles balefully through a tight smile, as he grills Melinda and Brian about what's going on, at the same time his eyes dart back and forth looking for signs of betrayal, his head lowered as if towering above people despite his small stature.

Giamatti's Landy is malevolent piece of work. Festooned in a toupee, he usually starts a conversation by apologizing for his previous behavior, like a bad father trying to retain your good side (and puts him in parallel with Brian's father Murry—played by Bill Camp—both self-important men who end up exploiting and resenting their meal ticket) Landy is Wilson's psychiatrist, life-coach, nutritionist, guru, and disciplinarian, as well as being the current tenant of his house (Brian's in another one and reveals his perpetual silver lining-search by saying "I got to pick my own room.") Landy sees the bond between Melinda and Brian and, in a requested meeting (by him), offers her "unprecedented access—but you've got to work with me." Landy's hold on Wilson is total, controlling what he eats and when, and hectoring Wilson into working at a piano (and taking co-writing credit). He's abusive, humiliating, while keeping his charge dosed on "allergy medications" that leave Wilson nearly catatonic. Landy has had him diagnosed a "paranoid schizophrenic" and while the singer-songwriter does hear voices in his head (usually in harmony), it's a wonder he's not paranoid what with the whole world against him, while lionizing him at the same time.

Except Melinda. For whatever reason, she decides to take on Landy—even when she is banned by him from seeing Wilson. For Brian, it's the end of a long line of using, usery authority figures, and, left alone, he is finally able to think for himself...and what he sees isn't too bad.

It's a great story and truly inspirational for anybody who has suffered clinical depression, as Wilson is an extreme case, crippled by his own need to achieve beyond his limitations and stalemated from being able to reach it, by forces without and within. Yet, there he is, now, in concert before thousands of enraptured fans, mixing old hits and new works (which are great, by the way—check out below) with a band of artists who manage to play his most complicated stuff...and do it live. Wilson finally cracked and completed "Smile" and performed it in concert before committing it to recording and posterity. Amazing. Heroic. He survived his second act and emerged triumphant for a third. His life, itself, is worth a standing ovation, and if Love & Mercy simplifies and homogenizes the depths of his despair for public consumption (as was done with A Beautiful Mind), at least it manages to capture some of the nuances that made the music so memorable the instant it went from Wilson's mind...to ours.

Countdown to Avengers: Age of Ultron—Captain America

The latest "Avengers" movie comes out on May first.  

For this month of Fridays before the premiere, we'll be re-running reviews of the movies that formed the stepping stones for this latest one, including this very integral part of the team—even though the Marvel Comics Group chose him to be put him into a feature film last. Maybe itt's because the character has had  a long jingoistic streak about him. Maybe it's because a character that is so star-spangled and patriotic might not "play" well in foreign countries (I mean "play" with foreign audiences, that's not a political statement—although it certainly could be one). 

He's the one Marvel character that dates back to the "Golden Age of Comics" in the 1940's and, so, had to be handled "just so" for him to be accepted by modern audiences. He is the nation's super-soldier: Captain America.

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"When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shiiiield..."  (KLANG!)
or
"Yeah, I've Knocked Adolf Hitler Out Over 200 Times."

This is the one that needed to work.

It all hinges on this one and it would be a tough fight.  Captain America is the one Marvel A-lister who has seemed to defy the switch to other media. There were the '60's cartoons—basically limited-animation panels from the comics—a bad '90's film, a serial film, a couple of lousy TV movies. Next year's The Avengers extravaganza depends on the character, so this is the one to be nervous about.

"Cap" is Marvel's version of Superman, a Big Blue Boy Scout, but like DC's Big Guy, it's tough to write for him—the fight always has to come to him and a lot of the time he plays defense, he has no motivation other than an altruistic manner, and he's seemingly unstoppable, meaning the villains have to be more elaborate and more interesting than he is. Like Superman, the character is often changed—costume, identity, or even, when all else fails...killed. Up until this time, the few live-action CA interpretations have seemed like shielded "Six Million Dollar Man" episodes, cheap and stunted. It's tough to replicate the dramatic moves the character pulls in the comics (he's usually shown in mid-move, suspended, too) as opposed to Spider-man.  Captain America: The First Avenger has to work.

It does.  Like gangbusters.

Director Joe Johnston has been down this road before—he directed The Rocketeer, another WWII-era superhero flick, after all—but he's never made a film as good as this one (he made The Wolfman last year). CA:TFA takes the story back to its comic-book origin roots when it was created by street-wise kids Joe Simon* and Jack Kirby—fighting Nazi's and flying colors. At the same time, it pays affectionate tribute to past Cap incarnations, while delivering the action goods in a neat retro-futuristic environment, a bit like what Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow should have been.** 

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is a 98 pound Brooklynite weakling (such things do exist, I've heard), who wants to join the Army and is constantly turned down for any number of good reasons and envious of his pal James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) who's off to fight in the European Theater with the 107th. In a note that ties in with locations from the Iron Man movies, Rogers goes to the New York World's Fair on a double-date with Bucky, and his G.I. "jones" is noticed by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who gets the kid a hitch, and as a washout in training, signs him up for a "super-soldier" program that Hitler was very interested in before Erskine fled Germany. Meanwhile, half a world away, one of Erskine's test-subjects Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is blitz-krieging around the world looking for ancient artifacts, ostensibly to help with Germany's war-effort, but secretly to gain ultimate power to form his own Reich, with his science group, Hydra.  Erskine's experiments on Schmidt have drastically disfigured him, but for Rogers, the attempts are a stunning success. 

Rogers wants to fight, but the government instead presses him into service as a war-bonds spokesman, as "Captain America," which goes over well at home, but is a joke to the soldiers on the line. Under the auspices of Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, who laconically nearly walks away with the movie) and Major Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell, plucky—she doesn't blink when she fires a gun), Rogers goes against orders and inserts himself into the fight, rescuing a squad of Hydra prisoners, including his pal Bucky and a motley crew of dog-faces familiar to anyone who's read the comics.

She doesn't blink...

The sight of The Howling Commandos brought a big smile to my face, but even without them, Johnston makes a fun, goofy film, with some nice war action mixed in with well-done super-hero antics, and shot along the lines of a film Johnston story-boarded early in his career, Raiders of the Lost Ark (with the occasional nod to Leni Riefenstahl). Johnston does some nice movie cross-referencing by making the character of Howard Stark, very Howard Hughes-like after his own The Rocketeer, and casting Dominic Cooper in the part, often resembling Leonardo DiCaprio from The Aviator. Chris Evans, who plays Steve Rogers, is a good funny actor, but he's tamped down here, playing everything completely straight and without irony, very much the Boy Scout. This is one of the better Marvel movies, and one of the better superhero movies to come out, as well.

Cap shields the Howling Commando's

As with the other Marvel films, stick around until after the credits for a big surprise, that will whet your appetite for next year. "Some assembly required."  Heh.

Wilhelm Alert @ 01:33

Cap finds he's entered a brave new world

*  As Stan Lee has his customary cameo in this film (he's good, too) it would have been nice—really nice—if Cap's REAL creator was included in the film. The legendary Jack Kirby died in 1994. Joe Simon died in 2011, long enough to see his co-creation hit the big screen and become a hit.

** It's a combination of Kirby-esque pod-forms, more suited for the 1960's, and lo-tech '40's dials and toggles (which spit sparks in duress), and my favorite joke in the film is the non-LED (not invented yet) countdown indicators used in the Red Skull's lab—as any timed pyro-technician will tell you, the only reason to have such a device is to build suspense in movie audiences.

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Fighting the Past By S.H.I.E.L.D.ing the Present
or
By the Banks of the Ol' Watergate

The new "Captain America" movie out of Marvel Studios and Disney, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the first post-Avengers sequel that amounts to anything, or even attempts to do something of any significance beyond marking time, or being a tentpole-placeholder until the next group assemblage movie comes along.* But, instead of paying lip-service to The Avengers, or pinging off it, the new Cap movie largely ignores it and sets out on its own path, with a story that is very much associated with the first film, while not being dependent on it, for those who are just now joining the story. It's a neat little bit of story-gymnastics that would rival any of the stunt sequences of this movie, of which there are many and varied (some of which work and some of which are visual noise).

What makes Captain America (as jingoistic a character as there's been) unique, and, surprisingly, the most interesting of the Marvel film characters is his "other-ness." More so than the hipster Tony Stark, or the bland bulk of Thor, Captain America is a product of his time, which was World War II, when ideals were different.  Back then, there was a palpable belief in country, in government, in sacrifice, and in "doing the right thing." Steve "Captain America" Rogers has missed a lot of history while he was frozen in time and arctic ice. The first movie (The First Avenger) ended with his first glimpse of the brave new world he'd thawed into. The Avengers made use of his post-WWII ignorance, contrasting him with Stark's cynicism and making laughs out of his pop-culture ignorance ("Flying monkeys? I understand that reference," he says at one point). He's still a stranger in a strange land, but he's learning; in this movie, he carries a notebook for jotting down things he's missed and wants to investigate (see below).

Rogers (Chris Evans) and Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson)
peer at something they don't like.

He needs to fill in a lot of gaps or else he'd wonder why the Triskelion—the headquarters of the National Security Agency S.H.I.E.L.D.—is located so close to the Watergate Hotel. After a brief jaunt around Washington D.C., Rogers (Chris Evans) and a clutch of SHIELD operatives (including The Black Widow—Natasha Romanoff, played by Scarlett Johansson) are called on a rescue mission for a hijacked ship. It becomes apparent after the pirates are taken down, that there's more to the mission than meets the one eye of SHIELD head Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, given a lot to do here). This leads to a tense stand-off between Fury and Rogers over a SHIELD project called "Insight," utilizing those flying battleships from The Avengers for some very high-level surveillance and attack capabilities. Rogers is aghast at the ships' annihilative first-strike capabilities, and reminds Fury that back in his day, he fought for freedom. "This isn't freedom," he says with no fashionable mock irony."This is fear."

"And this is a big ol' plane chasing you..."

The man behind the initiative is Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford, relaxed and as low-key as he's been in years), and when Fury is taken out of action by a coordinated attack, he goes on the offensive, suspecting that Rogers, who appears to be tight-lipped about it, may be behind it and has gone rogue. He starts his own ironic "war on America" to stop Rogers, Romanoff, and a new ally, vet Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka "The Falcon," who go their own way to get to the bottom of the attack on Fury, and find the answers go back to old enemies...and old friends.

There's something unnerving...and vaguely thrilling..about seeing
Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Redford playing scenes together.

Of course, they do. It's bold to see the second chapter of the Captain America trilogy go so far as to re-shape so much bedrock in the Marvel movie Universe, and move so quickly to make Cap so much culturally removed from our times, but morally apart, as well. It simultaneously makes the character more of a rebel (the way we like our superheroes in movies, it seems) and more exemplary of a hero in the traditional role of a "big blue boy-scout."

That's a big leap to make. Also, a big leap is that the movie seems to revolve around the trope that "Nobody dies in comic books...ever"...and fairly consistently. One expects a cameo from Tommy Lee Jones at any moment (which doesn't happen).

"Woopsy." Shield-throwing works not so much...

The title refers to another rogue agent—The Winter Soldier—who crops up and is seemingly indestructible in a fight. He's this movie's "player on the other side" sharing more with the Captain than separates them—both are super-fast, are physically enhanced and have an indestructible metal component (Cap, his shield; the soldier his left arm) that are their "go-to" secret weapons when things get dicey—the type that, if they weren't on opposing sides and trying to kill each other, in another reality they might have been friends.

Clang!  Metal shield against metal arm.
These guys have a lot in common.

But, they're not friends now and the frequent clashes pose a challenge to the new directors Anthony and Joe Russo (they're mostly known for working on the TV show "Community" and the comedy You, Me and Dupree). So far, the heroics of Captain America have been visually limited—Joe Johnston and Joss Whedon had him running over vehicles a lot—but the gymnastics are more convoluted, both in action and in the way they're portrayed. The Russo's use every trick in the book (the occasional long shot, but mostly tight compositions, sometimes with every move having its own shot and angle, and edited in different ways, sometimes employing frame-skipping). Sometimes it works, but often there's a lack of perspective, so you have no idea how the war is going, so focused as they are on individual hit-points. One wishes that Johnston, who brought a sure directorial hand to the first film, could have been coaxed back for this one.

Stay to the end of the credits and you'll see not one, but two Easter egg sequences: the first, setting up two new members of "The Avengers," the other foreshadowing the confrontation for the third Captain America movie, which will be playing "super-chicken" in a couple years time with the Superman/Batman (and Wonder Woman) movie.

Two of the little jokes in CA: TWS—Nick Fury's tombstone has a familiar Bible quote in its pulp; Steve Rogers keeps a notebook of stuff he needs to catch up on.

* As opposed to Iron Man 3, which probably shouldn't have happened, and Thor: The Dark World, which was only a bit better than its first movie.

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