MOVIE REVIEW: AVENGERS CONFIDENTIAL- BLACK WIDOW AND PUNISHER (2014)

With Guardians of the Galaxy just around the corner and Avengers: Age of Ultron hype starting to ramp up, I decided to delve into one of the Avengers animated offerings. Avengers Confidential follows the story of Punisher and Black Widow as they try to take down a team of villains.

It starts with Punisher and Black Widow butting heads over custody of a criminal. This, of course, establishes that they are pretty evenly matched, before Nick Fury shows up. It is quite an effective introduction for showing the spy-style of Black Widow as opposed to Punisher’s brutal style. From here, it quickly gets into the story of Punisher and Black Widow teaming up to take down Leviathan, a bad-guy group who has stolen Shield weapons. Of course, things don’t quite go as planned.

Avengers Confidential keeps trying to artificially increase the tension in the story by making the characters take actions that make no sense. Whether it is a convenient deus-ex brain washing machine or Nick Fury withholding vital information about the mission, it always feels like it is trying to shoe-horn in tension. I envision that this movie could have worked as a buddy-cop type drama, with the contrast between Black Widow’s spy skills and Punisher’s brutal style as they are trying to be heroes even though they are ordinary people in a world of monsters and super-soldiers. Instead, we get an endless string of fights between them which just ends up feeling tiring.

The animation style for the fighting doesn’t help matters. It definitely feels like they overused the big-sound-and-camera-shake for a hit, leaving it feeling mundane instead of only for the big hits. Most of the moves that they depict also end up feeling very unrealistic, which takes away from any impact that the fights might have. What could have been an interesting movie on the non-superpowered heroes of the marvel universe just ends up feeling like a mash-up of styles.

Overall, I feel like Avengers Confidential was a missed opportunity. It could have been good and starts off promising, but too many times it feels the need to shove extra tension and action into the movie instead of letting a story develop. Oh well, at least the proper cinematic marvel franchise is still awesome.

2 out of 5 punishing waffles.

CAPTAIN AMERICA- THE WINTER SOLDIER

Look- You have probably already seen Captain America. You have probably already read all the reviews about it from a bunch of other sources. So, to add to all the other stuff that you know about The Winter Soldier, here is something awesome that you should watch.

“Captain America- F&*k Yeah.”

So The Winter Soldier completes the Avengers trinity of sequels, following on from Iron Man and Thor movies. In it, Liberty himself is in a moral quandary based on SHIELD’s new method of enforcing their laws based of pre-emptive strikes. There is the obligatory bad business-guy and also the return of fellow Avengers Nick Fury and Black Widow. And there is also the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, when the movie remembers he exists.

The Winter Soldier has plenty of action scenes. And it is a good thing that these are among some of the best action scenes I have seen this year. Taking a break from repulsor beams and lightning bolts, the action in Winter Soldier feels allot grittier and visceral as the good and bad guys engage in hand-to-hand fighting or shoot-outs. But amongst all this fighting, there is also a pretty good spy-style thriller filled with espionage and double crosses as Captain America and co. Try to figure out what is going on.

Captain America does feel like it tries to fit allot of things in. There is the corruption of SHIELD, an expositing 60’s style super-computer, Captain America returning to the world, Black Widow having more of a personality and some epic shield throwing scenes. However, it never feels too bloated as it does a good job balancing most things. 

Unfortunately, a couple of things do fall flat. Falcon feels very emotionless. It sometimes felt like watching a brick holding emoticon faces in front of it and switching them between scenes. The Winter Soldier also doesn’t feel like he has too much to do in his own movie. He has his big reveal of who he is, a scene showing him being brainwashed and that is it, instead being used more as a sequel hook.

Captain America- The Winter Soldier was an entertaining movie from start to finish. It has some awesome action scenes and is a very entertaining spy-thriller. It also refuses to end the movie on a giant reset button for the Marvel cinematic universe. So if you haven’t watched the video linked above, you should do that now. And if you can find a shield to throw, you should go throw a shield.

4.5 out of 5 Star-Spangled Waffles.