CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER

(Anthony & Joe Russo, 2014)

Marvel's confidence is startling; now that the universe they work in has been established, risks can be taken. So here we have a massive conspiracy action-thriller set mainly in the corridors of power in Washington DC. Only the hero who discovers the conspiracy happens to be Captain America (Chris Evans), and the organisation behind it is Hydra, the surviving Nazi dark science and occult division introduced in the first Captain America film. The Russo brothers reveal a genuine gift for action here; this film is stuffed with extended, brutal action sequences, most of which are nicely choreographed and thrillingly shot. We are shown Captain America as a sort of super-Bourne, an unstoppable fighting machine who cuts through most opponents with absolute ease. That only makes his clashes with the Winter Soldier - a mysterious Soviet assassin - more exciting and important to the story. Here our hero is facing an equal, introducing a crucial note of vulnerability to his character.
The plot finds him discovering that there is something rotten at the heart of SHIELD, the spy organisation at the heart of the Marvel Universe,  run by Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson). When there is an attempt on Fury's life, Cap and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) find themselves on the run from SHIELD, needing the help of a new friend, Sam (Anthony Mackie), better known as "Falcon,"as they race to stop the simultaneous launch of three immense, heavily armed helicarriers into the skies above America.
Alongside the blistering, relentlessly growing action scenes, Marvel casts its films impeccably, and the addition of the likes of Robert Redford and Frank Grillo in crucial roles just helps make this film play that much more satisfyingly. While there may be a couple of scenes of men in suits arguing in offices too many - indeed, the whole thing is about a half an hour too long - even those sequences contain their fair share of wit. The scene where Arnim Zola explains how Hydra has shaped the 20th Century until people are so willing to accept a surveillance state is darkly hilarious, as are many of the references to all the pop culture Cap missed while he was frozen.
But it is the principals who carry this. Evans nails Cap again, capturing his uncertainty about the modern world and his confidence in his own moral barometer, but also revealing a quiet sense of humour, and a melancholic sense of loss. Johansson's Widow is an altogether more complex creation, and the dynamic between the two characters is fascinating and nicely played by the actors.

ALL IS LOST

(J.C. Chandor, 2013)

Amongst other things, All Is Lost plays like a direct reaction to writer-director J.C. Chandor's debut, the talky stock market drama Margin Call. That film was full of characters and sodden with dialogue in impersonal created spaces - offices, corridors, automobiles.
All Is Lost features virtually no dialogue. And the majority of it takes place in the open, on the vastness of the ocean.
Robert Redford plays the nameless protagonist, awoken aboard his yacht in the middle of the Indian Ocean by a collision with a floating shipping container. A gaping hole in the side of his boat is letting in water. He acts quickly, ingeniously escaping the container, and sets about making repairs. Aside from an opening voiceover wherein he apologises and says he will miss people, all that we know about Redford's character we learn from observing him doing things: he is utterly defined by his actions. He climbs the mast, pumps out the cabin, eats from a can, smiles at a sunset, falls asleep while reading, tries to fix the radio, goes overboard but survives...this all places a heavy burden on Redford as performer, and he is perhaps the best he has ever been here; telling us all we need to know through sighs and wrinkled scowls as his situation gets progressively worse from scene to scene...
Chandor's story is wonderfully grim. Hope is offered to his hero on a few occasions, then brutally crushed. The logic with which things fall apart is similarly precise. There are a few poetic asides - Chandor occasionally pulls away from the action on the boat to show us a view from below - this tiny craft bobbing in the immensity of the sea. We see shoals of fish swim nearby. Redford scans the horizon for another vessel - he is dwarfed by the expanse of water, the hugeness of the sky above, his struggle for survival rendered petty and small by the magnificence of nature itself.
This potent, utterly gripping survival tale works completely as a narrative experience, but it is also simple enough to offer many different allegorical interpretations. The ambiguity of the ending only emphasises this further.
Ultimately though All Is Lost establishes Chandor as an interesting young American director, and offers Redford his first great role in years.