Captain America: Winter Soldier movie review

No April Fools jokes this year.  I'm too busy with grad school stuff to worry about silliness like that.  What you get is a review of the latest Marvel cinematic offering in the Avengers family of films, Captain America: Winter Soldier.  It was released early in South Korea, so we went to see it last Saturday.

First of all, parents arriving here by searching for the movie title plus "curse," there was one instance of an "s" word that I noticed.  Otherwise, free of foul language.

The first Cap movie scratched an itch for me, being IMO a good blend of comic book super hero action and a traditional war movie.  This time, the action takes place in modern times (a few flashbacks to the WWII era aside), and is all in super-heroics mode.  There are internal divisions within S.H.I.E.L.D. (haven't been watching Agents of Shield yet, so not sure how that ties in), the return of Hydra, and the mysterious new villain Winter Soldier (not much of a mystery who this is if you pay attention to casting, but if you wish to avoid spoilers, don't check IMDB for who's playing who until after you watch it).

Winter Soldier, with his bionic arm and super-soldier strength/speed, makes a good foil for Cap.  Nick Fury has a lot more action in this movie, as well.  We see a bit more of the true face of the Black Widow (or is it?).  Falcon was a nice addition, although I would have liked to see a bit more of him in the movie.  He's a really minor player until Act 3.  During- and post-credits clips add in a familiar villain to the movie universe and of course hint at what's to come in Captain America 3.

I can't say it was my favorite of the Avengers family movies, but it wasn't bad, either.  The plot was more or less sound (it's Marvel, after all, so you have to expect some larger than life silliness in the plot/conflicts).  There were some intense action scenes, humor, and some nice tie-ins to the first Cap movie without over-doing it.

If you're a fan of what Marvel Studios have done so far, you're not likely to be disappointed in this movie.  You probably won't be blown away by it, but hey, they can't all be as pitch perfect as Iron Man 1 or Avengers were.