Movie Review: “Captain America: Civil War”

Captain America: Civil War – 3 1/2 (out of 4 Stars)

I have been waiting quite a while for this film to come out. After the first Captain America: The First Avenger and then the second Captain America: The Winter Soldier (both great films by the way) I was waiting for three home runs in a row.

All I can say is I was not disappointed. From the first moment of this film it was action, action, action all shown in 3-D. So after a few minutes of heart racing, blood pumping excitement (as you would expect with a Captain America film) the film slowed its pace and dealt with the existential question (the main plot of the movie); should superheroes have unrestricted and unchecked access to fight evil regardless of the collateral damage? This is a pretty profound question and has been brought up in many other films and theological works. What good is it to save a town but allow hundreds to die in the process. If you remember the 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn it discussed the question "Do the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the few or do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one"?

In this story Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) attempt to stop Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo) from stealing a biological weapon from a lab in Lagos Nigeria. However, things go wrong and collateral damage kills innocent people (didn’t that also happen in the Avenger’s 1st Movie? Yeah Right, no one died as New York City Collapsed into a pile of rubble).

Fearing that superheroes are going unchecked, the United Nations creates the ‘Skovia Accords’, an international governing body to oversee and control the Avengers.

Of course not all of the Avengers believe that they can embrace this control and they are divided on the subject, some for, some against, which becomes the basis of the term ‘civil war’.

Iron Man feels he and his group should comply where Captain America believes that freedom reigns. It should not be controlled. So the movie turns from a Captain America movie to an Avengers (minus the Hulk & Thor… he’s probably having fun with Jane somewhere in the universe, we’ll get to that later) movie.  Add in a few new superheroes such as Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Spiderman (Tom Holland), Vision (Paul Bettany) and Ant-man (Paul Rudd) and you’ve got a great match for volleyball game.

Ok, so here are the teams.

Team Stark: Iron Man, War Machine, Black Panther, Vision, Spider-Man & Black Widow

Team America: Captain America, Winter Solder, Falcon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch & Ant-Man

Now as you know I never give away the plot but take a guess who wins. You only have three guesses.  It’s either a loose, win or draw. Lots of drama, lots of conflicts, lots of fun.

There is so much more I can say about this movie however I feel that it is best that you go see it for yourself. I totally loved this movie. I could see it again and again and again. The only confusing part is should this really be a Captain America or an Avengers movie?  Since they choose Captain America, I absolutely cannot wait for the next Avengers movie. What are they going to come up with next? And of course this being a Marvel movie don’t leave the theater until the last frame. There are 2 epilogue scenes that are worth the wait.

As far as Thor and Jane go, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the third Avengers movie to find out.

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