Comic book superhero movies aren’t really my thing, and yet I’ve enjoyed several of them lately from Marvel.  This is the second go-round (not counting The Avengers) of Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America (Chris Evans), the World War II hero thawed out after spending about forty years on ice in the Arctic.  He is still adjusting to the modern world, to the deaths of most of the people he had known, and to the notion that many people are actually not whom they seem to be.

This notion, spoken by S.H.I.E.L.D. director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) — that no one can be trusted — is at the heart of The Winter Soldier.  It became commonplace in espionage literature last century that moles and traitors were everywhere, and that no agency, no matter now secretive, was safe.  The result is that most movies with espionage elements include betrayal, treason, double crosses and side switching as a matter of course, rendering those surprises not particularly surprising.  Viewing the film, I had the same dismay as Steve Rogers, that everyone has secrets and that even one’s closest allies cannot always be trusted.  It’s wearying to watch a film when one knows with certainty that it’s just a matter of time before someone on the good side will be revealed to have been a bad guy the whole time.  Someone who has been under cover years and years, but within the next 136 minutes will reveal his or her true allegiance in the name of crazy beliefs.  It’s tough to take that seriously.

That said, however, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is genuinely exciting and generally sharp entertainment.  The action sequences are spellbinding and the CGI helicarriers are really cool.  Rogers may be a bit too bland to carry a movie this big, but he is surrounded by Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson); Fury; Sam Wilson, the Falcon (Anthony Mackie); the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan); and a charismatic chief in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D., Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford). The conglomeration of all these personalities, cool hardware and a premise that is surprisingly creepy leads to solid, smart entertainment.  It’s not great by any means, but it is involving, engrossing and often compelling.

Anthony Russo and Joe Russo deserve credit for co-directing an action movie packed with real-life stunts and crashes in favor of computer trickery.  The emphasis is on the characters, which is always a good thing, and the result is a movie that often achieves that to which it aspires.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  3 May 2014.