Review – Captain America: Civil War

I’ll be honest, I was getting a little bored with Marvel.  I thought the studio hit its peak with The Avengers and all the movies following it were good, but very cookie-cutter and safe.  Sure Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) was great, but that’s because it was different than anything Marvel had previously done.  Now, with Captain America: Civil War, Marvel has created its most epic and ambitious film ever and also one of the studio’s finest.

After a series of destruction in a number of cities, the government wants to oversee The Avengers activity, which causes a rift between Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) causing The Avengers to pick sides.

We get a great mix of new characters and the characters we know and love.  Chadwick Boseman is ferocious as Black Panther and by far my favorite character in the movie.  Tom Holland might be the best incarnation of Spider-Man we’ve ever seen on screen.  He had a lot more screen time than I anticipated and I was more than okay with that.  Downey and Evans are as good as ever as Iron Man and the Cap and give arguably their best performances as the iconic heroes.  And the rest of the cast, which includes Sebastian Stan as The Winter Solider, Paul Bettany as Vision, Scarlet Johansson as Black Widow, Don Cheadle as War Machine, Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, and Paul Rudd as Ant-Man, are all great.  This is one of the most impressive casts of 2016.

Similar to Captain America: The Winter Solider (2014), The Russo Brothers have made a film that feels more like a globe trotting spy movie than a comic book movie.  They take us to different places and introduces us to different characters and develop all of them expertly.  The movie does revolve around Captain America, but every character is given their due.  And at a runtime of over two and a half hours, the movie flies by with great pacing.  It could have gone on another half hour and I would not have cared.

And let’s not forget about the action, which is some of the best stuff Marvel as ever done.  We get great individual fights, like the fights between Black Panther and The Winter Solider, and the explosive final fight which pits Team Captain America vs Team Iron Man.  The Russo Brothers do a great job of building the tension through out the movie until the epic battle, which pays off huge.  It might be the single greatest scene in the history of the MCU.

Captain America: Civil War is one of the greatest comic book movies of all-time and the best Marvel film since The Avengers.  This is a slick, thrilling film filled with deep emotions and conflict.  The action is the best Marvel has ever produced and all the characters, new and old, are perfect.  This is the movie to beat this summer and one of the best movies of 2016.

MY RATING – 4/4

Did you see Captain America: Civil War?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter @kevflix or on Facebook at Kevflix.