Captain America: The First Avenger was somewhat strange – it combined an interesting origin story with goofy plot elements and dumb action sequences. In the world of superhero movies, there is an unofficial rule that the sequel is better than the first movie. Luckily, this is the case with Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Not only is 'The Winter Soldier' clearly superior to 'The First Avenger', but this movie is also (arguably), for now, the best movie in the Phase 2 of Marvel Cinematic Universe. That being said, Captain America: The Winter Soldier isn't as good as everyone makes it out to be (it currently has pretty high ratings on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes).

The movie follows Steve Rogers aka Captain America (Chris Evans) as he tries to find his place in the modern world, and that definitely isn't easy for him – the world clearly changed and even S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't what it used to be. He is most worried about S.H.I.E.L.D.'s project Insight, which is basically a plan to launch 3 next generation Helicarriers to the sky to neutralize, from above, any possible threat. The situation gets more complicated when Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) gets attacked in broad daylight, and Steve Rogers doesn't know who to trust anymore – could it be that S.H.I.E.L.D. is compromised? Of all the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier feels the least like a superhero movie. There's a certain James Bond/spy movie vibe to it, and Kevin Feige, the movie's producer and President of Marvel Studios, went as far as to describe it as 'a 1970s political thriller masquerading as a big superhero movie'. In spite of being described as a '1970′s political thriller', 'The Winter Soldier' is still a relevant movie, in the way that it deals with some major recent events (the post 9/11 world and WikiLeaks). This new direction in Marvel movies is definitely a brave one and should definitely be applauded.

Visually, the movie looks great, which could be explained by another novelty in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – the use of visual effects is reduced to the minimum (which was the decision of the movie's directors, the Russo brothers). The action sequences are well shot and edited and rank amongst the best ones I've seen in Marvel movies. As for the actors in the movie, some of them played their characters so many times now, they need no special analyzing (Chris Evans, Samuel L. Jackson & Scarlett Johansson), and the newcomers did a satisfying job – Robert Redford was believable as Alexander Pierce, Anthony Mackie's The Falcon was nicely introduced and Sebastian Stan's Winter Soldier was alright (despite he doesn't really play that important a role for someone who has his name appearing in the movie title).

Even though Captain America: The Winter Soldier does many things right, it still suffers from the same flaw many movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe do: the villains are not that good. By now, 9 movies have been released in the MCU, all of them producing only one memorable villain – Loki. The villains in Captain America: The Winter Soldier are forgettable at worst, and average at best. Not that a movie necessarily needs a great villain to be great itself, but it definitely helps if the audience has an interesting villain to help them sit through the movie (with its runtime of 136 minutes, Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the second longest movie in the MCU, which is a little too much for a solo superhero movie). Also, as the movie progresses, it gets increasingly worse, with its action packed third act suffering from some ridiculous elements. Undoubtedly, all these elements – the bland villains, the runtime, the inconsistent quality – are precisely what keeps Captain America: The Winter Soldier from reaching its full potential.

Rating: 7/10 Read more reviews at http://passpopcorn.com/