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Captain America: Civil War

First film in Australia for a few years, so let me get this off my chest. Here are some things Japanese (multiplex) cinemas don't have that Australian ones do:
  1. Dirty screens. That seems to be the simplest thing to sort out. Clean the fucking stains off the screen or disable the cockends that are lobbing stuff at it. 
  2. Twats talking on their mobiles during the film.
  3. Same twats fiddling with their BRIGHT mobiles during the film.
  4. Little kids talking to mummy about scenes in the film. Loudly.
  5. Big kids showing off loudly (admittedly during the credits, but still, grow up fuck-knuckles).

Pronto, onto the film proper. This is the third Captain America film by my reckoning but it actually operates as a pseudo-Avengers film. This isn't a bad thing. The first two C.A. films were quite dissimilar in my opinion; a boring, patriotic origin story, followed by a 1970s style, paranoia-filled thriller. You can guess which I preferred. A third one might have gone either way but adding Downey Jnr, Johansson, Bettany, and so on, was never going to do any harm.

The PR work on the character of C.A. continues, as here he's basically completed his arc from flag-waving patriot to right-minded, civil libertarian 'insurgent'. Quite a swing. Iron Man may also be right-minded but he's so full of guilt about the whole Ultravox robot thing that he isn't thinking straight. Especially when the major reveal occurs.

There's a nice mix of light and dark in the writing, as is the case with most Marvel films. The light is mostly provided by cameos here - new Spidey, Ant-man, the jealousy between the other two points of C.A.'s love triangle - Falcon and Bucky. And don't tell me C.A. kissing a woman changed anything.

The dark is pretty much provided by the breakdown of C.A. and I.M's friendship, mirroring the creeping loss of freedom and aforementioned civil liberties. The filmmakers have gamely tried to make the punters think about a pretty pertinent issue, while dressing it up with fun airport battles and car chases. Hats off. And they avoided the old formula of 'big object crashing to earth' as a climax, the more personal donnybrook working much better.

I liked the red MacGuffin of the mini-army of super soldiers but was a little under-awed by this Zemo fella. Not a super power to be seen but the most unfeasible skill set. He does a shitload of heavy lifting in Civil War. Small potatoes. This was still a fairly high water mark among Marvel films.

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