Captain America: Civil War

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Sebastian Stan, Scarlett Johansson

Directed By: Anthony & Joe Russo

Written By: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely

Reviewed by Brendan Dousi

[rating: 4.5/5]

It’s hard not to compare the latest Marvel installment Captain America: Civil War with Warner Bros.’ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. There are undoubtedly similarities, both are big tentpole Superhero films focusing on the fisticuffs of their superpowered protagonists trying to overcome their ideological differences while being potential manipulated by some gosh-darned no-gooder. BvS got me worried, was it possible? Can you depict these pre-existing characters fighting it out in a way that doesn’t feel contrived or lazy? Can you actually properly explore, or even bring up their ideologies in a legitimate way that makes each side sound sane and somewhat reasonable and without being a hypocritical dickhead? BvS failed at all of these. Miserably. But guess what? Captain America: Civil War takes basically everything wrong with Batman v Superman and does it right.

There are a lot of moving pieces involved in Civil War. We have an incident involving the new Avengers team which assembled at the end of last year’s Age of Ultron that sets off a global-wide debate about super-powered intervention. Should the Avengers be able to act as a world-wide murder squad without any adherence to global law or foreign relations? Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) aka Iron Man, whose self-consuming guilt has been eating away at him since the very first Avengers film in 2012, thinks they shouldn’t. He believes there should be some level of accountability for his actions. Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) aka Captain America thinks that such a high level of bureaucracy will only get in the way of them being able to save who needs saving. How many people will die while they wait on someone to sign off on the paperwork? Neither is presented as wrong nor right in their reasoning, it is left purposefully ambiguous and provokes thought in audience member. Who’s side am I actually on?

On top of this central conflict we have all of the rest. We have a programmable super-assassin on the loose in Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), a super-powered weapon of mass destruction in Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and her over-powered robotic admirer Vision (Paul Bettany), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is torn between the two sides and then you have Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and War Machine (Don Cheadle) sticking by their comrades and friends with fierce loyalty. Not even to mention Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) popping by to join in the fray you also have two awesome and formiddable show-stealing new-comers in the form of Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Peter Parker aka Spider-man (Tom Holland). I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to cram all of these characters into this film and just make it work. Everyone here has their moments, even if their screentime is understandably limited. Each of these characters feels well-rounded and disctinct with their own personality, life, motivation and ideas on what’s going on. Even if it is as simple as “They asked me to help, so I’m helping”, no one feels out of place and all of the jigsaw pieces fit together wonderfully. It is a truly impressive juggling act and my hat goes off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

With all the potential for to become a jumbled mess and push out it’s titular character, Captain America: Civil War is still very much a Captain America film. This is Steve’s character. It is his dilhemma, he is always at the centre of the action and it is with him that we end the story. Tony does come as a close second-billing, that’s for sure, but it is never in doubt that the main story here is that of this one scrawny kid from Brooklyn who got turned into a Super Soldier and now all he wants to do is try and help his childhood friend get out of a serious mess while trying to hold onto his own beliefs and ideals. There is a wonderful sense of morality here that is so often lost in other films and it’s truly great to see some of these questions finally come up, even if they leave the answers up to the audience.

At this stage we’re pretty late into the Marvel game with Civil War kicking off Phase 3 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s pretty safe to say that you should know what to expect from a Marvel film by now. Yes, it doesn’t have a distict artistic style to it and it does avoid committing to anything truly world shattering. Though it is worth mentioning that we do get our first properly-rounded-out Villain in a Marvel film since Loki. So that’s a nice change. At this point these films are more of an extremely expensive big-screen television series. A little homogenous, but still a warm, welcome and dastardly entertaining experience. This film, more than any other, will leave you feeling lost if you’re not up to date on your Marvel Movie experiences. At the very least, check out Captain America: Winter Soldier and Avengers: Age of Ultron if you don’t want to be that person leaning over to your partner going, “Who the hell is that guy?”. What you will get, though, is a fantastically paced, beautifully shot, fun and exciting action extravaganza with some of the best superhero fights to come from cinema so far. Honestly, you will probably go and see this a second time solely to rewatch that airport scene.

Captain America: Civil War is without a doubt one of Marvel’s finest achievments to date with cohesive, emotive, character-driven story-telling and exhiliratingly fun and inventive action set-pieces. It may run a little long in the tooth at the beginning, needing to set it’s many pieces into place, but once that ball gets rolling you may find yourself not wanting it to stop. If you’re not a fan of Marvel, there’s really no point in bothering to check this out, but if you have ever found yourself enjoying an entry from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then do yourself a favour and check out Captain America: Civil War.

P.S. It’s a Marvel movie, guys, wait til the end of the bloody credits!