The greatest compliment and easiest assessment is that Winter Soldier is a much better movie than the first Captain America. A much more interesting plot and the feeling that everything isn’t going to be Okay just because Cap is around. There are serious, world changing events going on (for regular citizens and those sworn to protect them).

First and foremost, Chris Evans is much more comfortable wearing Captain America’s boots. Much like how Robert Downey Jr. is synonymous with Tony Stark, Evens is Steve Rogers. Well written dialog between characters (if rather blunt and in your face at times) develops a tangible bond between the good guys and makes their struggle seem more believable. I really like the idea of HYDRA having it’s tentacles wrapped around seemingly everything come to light and what it takes to really stop them. It parallels todays corruption and unease going on today, but frames it in comic book trappings.

HYDRA is evil and devious, going to crazy over the top feats to mold the world in a way they see fit. There’s some great action scenes from start to finish which range from infiltration missions, cat and mouse chases on foot and in vehicles, some surprisingly great hand to hand fighting (even if some of it is way too shaky and disorienting) topped off with screen filling explosions and destruction. Captain America’s super abilities let him do some really interesting and creative stuff action wise. With great speed and strength he’s got that cool superhuman “crash through stuff” navigation, he can take a serious beating and still get up which let’s him get away with more fantastic stuff (huge falls, general punishment) and his shield work is something no one else really does. There’s some really cool offensive and defensive weapon work in each fight he uses it in. Since he can’t shoot energy around and really doesn’t rely on guns much, they exploit his hand to hand strength to great affect (tip of the hat to the sound guys for really selling the hits). Plus, the characters supporting CA are really great too. Everyone else is just a human, but really good at what they do so they are able to smartly back him up. Captain America may be running point, but he wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the team he trusts.

I think I like The Winter Soldier so much because it’s a great division of Good vs Evil. The good guys are fun to be around and easy to root for. The bad guys are really bad and offer a real challenge to over come. The Winter Soldier is a great foil from Steve Roger’s past and an equal match in terms of strength and ability. The string pullers of HYDRA are real dirty suits and give a different level of challenge to over come (Black Widow really gets to shine and Nick Fury gets to be much more than a guy barking orders). I really appreciated seeing the regular people, the ones who are just cogs in the wheel of the machine stand up for themselves when evil shows it’s face. They didn’t need to be convinced or otherwise cajoled to put their foot down and try and stop awful things from happening right in front of them.

This is probably my favorite Marvel movie so far, even if it runs a bit long. They drop seeds to continue the universe all over the place and the entire cast gets to shine. This production team manage to successfully balance a lot of spinning plates, it’s some impressive stuff. There’s a few more comic book movies this year, let’s hope the quality is the same!