Is "Captain America Brave New World" a decent film? Sioux City Journal entertainment reporter Bruce Miller says Anthony Mackie is a fine replacement for Chris Evans, but the movie itself is too muddled.
Filmgoers shouldn't have to know anything to enjoy a movie.
Increasingly, however, Marvel producers expect fans to come with an encyclopedic knowledge of everything their company is dishing.
Nowhere is that more evident than in "Captain America: Brave New World."
Supposedly a reset of the Captain America character, it has so many callbacks to past films, comic books and situations, it's impossible to get a bead on what's what.
If those faithful ventured outside the universe they'd probably see this is largely dependent on moves first plied in "The Manchurian Candidate," a film that has nothing to do with Captain America, but plenty to say about mind control and politics.
Here, the new Captain (Anthony Mackie) is called to the White House to learn about adamantium, a substance that can do miraculous things. Ownership, however, is up in the air, causing the president (Harrison Ford) to meet with foreign leaders to discuss its future. At the summit, there's an assassination attempt and a way into the mind control storyline.
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As the Captain (with his sidekick, Falcon, played by Danny Ramirez) investigates, he discovers several bad guys and a string of plots that seemingly go nowhere.
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Directed by Julius Onah, this amounts to a television version of Captain America. There are plots that could be spread out over several episodes and still leave time for a few special effects.
When it's clear who's zooming who, "Brave New World" becomes a cautionary tale about outsiders in American politics. It also is a real callback to storylines and characters even the biggest fans may have forgotten.
A fresh start - with fresh ideas - would have been a better reason for Mackie to suit up.
He handles the shift nicely but has so little time to test his own foibles, "Brave New World" becomes a muddled mess of ideas that barely work. Ramirez is much better as his joking partner.
Ford acts like he's in one of those films he did in the 1990s but Tim Blake Nelson becomes a threat who should have had more build-up. When he shows up, it's time for someone else to see red and then it's just a matter of time before everything gets put into a place where it can be upset once again. Nelson works.
Because "The Boys" has done such an incredible job sending up superheroes, it's hard for something like this to maneuver, much less strive. Had Marvel corrupted someone in the Avengers, there might have been a need for someone else to rise to the challenge.
No such luck. This is one of those bad installments of a withering series that simply brings in a big name to hulk out.
Bruce Miller is editor of the Sioux City Journal.
REVIEW
'Captain America: Brave New World"
Rated: PG-13 for violence
Stars: 2 stars
Bruce's Take: You better brush up on Marvel to understand who some of the folks are.
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