'Captain America: Brave New World' Review: A Fun, Slick Mixed Bag

Anthony Mackie shows he can wear the shield, but Marvel's holes can't be avoided

Six years have passed since Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) went off into that good night and transferred Captain America to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). And while the 2021 series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier attempted to show us what a new Captain America could look like, audiences who didn’t consume Disney+ shows have been waiting a minute to see Wilson’s first cinematic effort as New Cap. The end result is Captain America: Brave New World, a high energy thriller that hearkens back to 1990s political thrillers like Enemy of the State.

Director Julius Onah, also a credited co-writer, maintains a suspenseful and intriguing tale of political corruption and power-mad politics. And though Marvel’s typical pratfalls end up undermining the third act, the majority of Brave New World hits more often than it misses.

Sam Wilson and friends Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) and Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) are invited to a party at now-President Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross’s (Harrison Ford) in celebration for saving a cache of adamantium. But when Isaiah, for reasons unknown, is involved in trying to kill President Ross it is up to Sam and Joaquin to figure out what happened. Thus kickstarts a series of events that sees the pair trapped in the web of a shadowy new villain.

The first two-thirds of Brave New World do a wonderful job of setting up a wronged man thriller in the vein of the aforementioned Enemy of the State, In the Line of Fire or the Tom Clancy adaptations starring Ford himself. Onah and the other screenwriters understand the amount of plot requires a brisk clip, and the audience is quickly introduced to big bad Sidewinder (Giancarlo Esposito) who, if given more time, could have been a stronger villain than who ends up taking over. With just a few scenes Esposito crafts a near-1980s villain, slashing priests and speaking in hushed Spanish to chill your blood.

The majority of the plot involves Sam’s attempts to clear Bradley, and this is where Brave New World is at its most interesting, albeit the script is forced to pull its punches. Anthony Mackie’s Wilson isn’t a supersoldier. He’s just a man who was gifted a phenomenal responsibility, much of which was explored in the Disney+ series. But putting Wilson on the world stage understandably ups the stakes, but the script is pained to avoid going too deep into issues of race relations or other things Wilson would be caught up in. There are small hints of this, like when Bradley demands Sam stop visiting him in jail because it would be a bad look. Or Ross, in a fit of anger, calling Wilson “son,” the implications which are charged, but push the plot’s themes as far as the studio will allow.

Mackie, Lumley and Ramirez have a fantastic rapport and the script clearly seems interested in how these three marginalized men interact with the highest echelons of fame and government. But it must always remember it’s a Disney Marvel movie. Which means Wilson and Torres’s attempt to clear Bradley’s name sees them dive into shadowy government labs held off the books which leads them to Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns, a character that will require you to Google the plot of The Incredible Hulk.

Disney has started moving away from creating a broad universe that requires audiences to have intimate knowledge of multiple movies and TV shows, but you will need some of that to properly understand Brave New World’s plot, specifically an awareness of who Torres is (from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier TV series), as well as the events in the 2008 Incredible Hulk feature. The post-Eric Bana, pre-Mark Ruffalo film. It’s remarkable that the movie doesn’t show too many flashbacks to that movie, and bloat the runtime, but instead just leaves him as a puppet-master pulling the strings. Nelson seems to be having fun covered in CGI and makeup, reminiscent of a super smart Victor Pascow from Pet Semetary. It’s painfully evident his plot is going to bear fruit down the line, but he works.

Harrison Ford, filling in after the passing of original Thaddeus Ross William Hurt, plays a similar character as Robert Redford in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in that they take an actor not know for playing villains and puts them in there. Ford is certainly capable at threading the needle between being angry and intimidating and being pitiful and sad. If anything, the movie’s portrayal of Ross is going to be … interesting to watch considering the world right now. However, when the movie veers into his “I’m the father of a daughter” subplot it gets a bit cornball.

The third act is messy, to say the least, with reshoots evident. The issue continues to be Marvel needing to throw in too much at the sake of the story. It’s already one thing to have Nelson’s character as the villain, but the third act turns 180 degrees into featuring Red Hulk — a spoiler McDonalds ads already showed — which feels shoehorned in. There’s the bare modicum of set-up for him, he arrives and, much like most of the Hulk films doesn’t really know what to do with him beyond letting him smash things. It’d be great if Marvel remembered that a good story is half the battle and throwing in a rogue’s gallery of character just because you can always feels cheap.

Captain America: Brave New World works best when it lets Sam Wilson actually live and experience the world he’s now in charge of. Mackie has enough personality and charm to give him Steve Rogers-esque stories and use them as launchpads for exploration. The movie doesn’t work the closer it gets to the end but those first two-thirds are pure enjoyment. Let’s hope Onah and Mackie get another opportunity to wear the shield and have fun.

Grade: B-