The US president is an alarmingly lurid colour and on the rampage, wreaking destruction and diplomatic havoc while being influenced by a crazed tech villain. Wait. Aren’t Marvel movies supposed to offer escapism? The difference in Captain America: Brave New World is that we don’t get nearly enough of this messy spectacle. Audiences have known since the film’s November trailer that Harrison Ford’s Thaddeus Ross will eventually burst his britches and morph into Red Hulk. That leaves few surprises up Marvel mastermind Kevin Feige’s sleeve. It also takes some 90 minutes to arrive.
What comes before is so much filler. Anthony Mackie ably replaces Chris Evans as the shield-wielding hero, bringing a swagger to the role while flanked by awed fledgling Falcon Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez). But unlike his predecessor, this Captain does not possess superpowers (“I should have taken that serum”), setting up the film’s doughy message that you just have to overcome your origins and work with what you’re given. Other new recruits include diminutive Israeli actor Shira Haas, who punches above her weight as a battle-ready presidential aide. But despite such inclusive intentions, facial disfigurement is once again used as a shorthand for evil when the film’s pathologically embittered puppet master finally steps out of the shadows.
Powering this plot is a military mind-control device dusted off from paranoiac classic The Manchurian Candidate. If only Brave New World had that film’s crackerjack George Axelrod dialogue. Where early Avengers movies thrived on mid-skirmish repartee, the ever-expanding MCU is now saddled with so much back-story there’s little room for badinage. And what there is here mostly falls flat. Director Julius Onah, making his franchise debut, adds some pleasing moments of extreme comic-book close-up, but otherwise does little to disrupt the existing formula, including muscular doses of video-game violence.
Ford valiantly tries to do some actual acting between action set pieces as President Ross moves from scarlet indignation to colourless redemption. It takes a big man to admit he’s wrong — or in this case, a smaller one. As for Feige, whose name means cowardly in German, he will need to screw his courage and return with something bolder if the coming Phase Six of Marvel is truly going to offer a Brave New World.
★★☆☆☆
In UK cinemas from February 14 and US cinemas now