Captain America: The Winter Soldier (5 Stars)

Finally Captain America (the character) has got into his stride. This is the sort of film that the first film should have been. It makes up for the disappointments first time round.

The film takes place in the present day. Trying to fit it in with the comics continuity, it combines the origin of the Falcon (1969) with Captain America's disillusionment with authority (early 1970's) and the return of Bucky Barnes (early 2000's). In a way this is yet another case of the telescoping in Marvel films, but it's very difficult for me to regard any post-1990 Marvel stories as canon. The disintegration of the bullpen community has led to the death of continuity. Any contradictions are explained away as simply having happened in an alternative universe. That's the perfect "Get out of Jail Free" card, the only difference being that you do pass Go and you do pick up $200. But that's enough cynicism for today. Let's get back to the film itself.

We find out that ever since it was founded, SHIELD was infiltrated by Hydra. In the film mythology the two organisations were founded simultaneously shortly after the Second World War as secret agencies to further the aims of the western powers and the Third Reich respectively. (In the comics Hydra's origins are unclear, though it seems that they existed since the days of the Egyptian pharaohs. SHIELD is a modern organisation, not created until the 1960's). Nick Fury is removed from SHIELD by an assassination attempt, so that Hydra can use SHIELD's newest high tech weapons to achieve world domination. Captain America and the Black Widow team up to fight against SHIELD, aided by a young war veteran, Sam Wilson, who becomes the Falcon. Hydra's top fighter is a man called the Winter Soldier, who we find out is Captain America's old friend Bucky Barnes, who he thought had been dead since 1944. In the comics Bucky was a teenager, probably 16 at the time of his death, but in the films he's shown as a fellow soldier.

The film's action is first class. It was exciting from beginning to end, and credible within the parameters of comic book films.

In the after-credits scene we see that Hydra's boss, Baron von Strucker, has captured "the twins", Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. This will lead to a conflict of interests between the respective film studios. The characters in the Avengers films and their spin-offs belong to Walt Disney studios, but Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are the children of Magneto, a character who belongs to 20th Century Fox. I'm sure that some sort of ugly fudge will be made to solve this problem.