Picture this: a suspected killer running from the government; a gruff president staving off enemies on a plane; a brainwashed former soldier embroiled in a conspiracy. It’s not the spiky political thrillers The Fugitive or Air Force One or The Manchurian Candidate, it’s Captain America: Brave New World.
Then again, the film recruited Harrison Ford into a cinematic universe that single-handedly welded the modern movie wink – why not give us what we expect? In its early goings, Brave New World does indeed read partially as a paranoid 1990s genre film trapped in a Marvel movie, struggling to break free from its franchise constraints: too much set-up, too many villains, too much thinly scattered lore.
After Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie), aka the new Captain America, retrieves a valuable substance known as adamantium from the villain Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito as a hammy iteration of Gus Fring, his Breaking Bad character), he brings it back to a grateful President Ross (Harrison Ford). At a gathering meant to announce a global treaty around adamantium’s usage, the president is nearly assassinated by Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly, a bright spot), a former soldier who goes rogue. Wilson, in turn, goes off to find the mystery villain who is controlling not only Bradley, but also what eventually becomes a hulking-mad Ross.
It’s all a lot to process and yet not nearly enough to hold your attention. For all of the movie’s genre ambitions, the only wisps of tangible political intrigue to be found are in the ones unintended, or via allusions to ones already explored (global class politics and the mixed messages about a Black Captain America in the film’s TV precursor, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier).
Bridget Jones fans go mad about the movie in Dublin: ‘We’ve been told inside to bring tissues, that we’ll be crying and laughing’
Captain America: Brave New World review – Not even Harrison Ford’s last-ditch Red Hulk can rescue this cheap, garish mess
To a Land Unknown review: This uncomfortable film about Palestinian refugees adrift in Athens sweeps you along in its momentum
Memoir of a Snail review: A lovely, heartfelt creation from an Oscar-winning animator
What’s left instead is a movie whose idea of tension is mostly to move at light speed with constant explication. The film, directed by Julius Onah, has the frayed tailoring of a movie marked by reshoots and changes: the writing is stiff and the ensemble is mostly charmless, while the visuals are slapdash.
As the new Captain America, Mackie was perhaps doomed from the start. And yet, he lacks the megawatt magnetism to elevate, or even just obscure, the poor construction of a tentpole franchise on his own. He is a far better actor elsewhere, but here his stand-alone avenger and the bad blockbuster only show the loose seams.
What the film mostly relies on instead is Ford, not only as an actor, but as his alter ego. When the Red Hulk finally does appear, it’s an add-on – a last-ditch effort to instead recapture the kind of fan-service glee of Marvels old. With its cheap action and garish visuals, it’s then that we enter yet another genre altogether: action-figure commercial. –This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
