★★★

A bit player in the Chris Evans era, Anthony Mackie never really found definition as Falcon. Marvel gave him the wings (literally) but none of the personality and individuality he needed to fly. Not that standing out was ever easy among such charismatic company as was the original Avengers. And yet, this is an age of second gos for the MCU. Soon enough, Robert Downey Jr. will return, albeit in a different guise. In the here and now, Brave New World gifts Mackie the spotlight and shield-wielding mantle of Captain America. Boy, does he take to it well. This feels a promising new direction, even if the vehicle itself couldn’t really be justifiably termed ‘brave’.

Curiously, this fourth Captain America adventure proves as much a sequel to 2008’s The Incredible Hulk – that little remembered, Edward Norton fronted, MCU originator – as Evans’ last stand. It relies, too, upon the events of Chloé Zhao’s more recent, but hardly better recalled, Eternals, and 2021’s scarcely watched Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. By necessity, then, the film treads a fine line. Brave New World has not the luxury of Evans’ heyday, in which Marvel could bank on religiously up-to-date audiences, and must tailor its narrative to the totally blind, without insulting the intelligence of the hardcore devotees still following every twist and turn. They’re still out there.

Largely, the balance is keenly managed. A little exposition here and there serves to prod viewers in the right direction but the action self contains itself well enough. It hardly matters if you’ve no memory of Thaddeus Ross or his history with Norton’s Hulk and Evans’ Cap’, it’s the type that counts. Besides, with Harrison Ford replacing the late William Hurt, he might as well be a different man. It’s not like Ross is an army suit these days either. Indeed, the film opens to his election day address as the newly returned US president. He stands on a platform of togetherness but it’s on his pioneered treaty with Japan – something to do with adamantium in the Indian Ocean (it doesn’t really matter) – upon which his reputation rests. This is being somewhat impeded by the propensity for his security intel to randomly try and assassinate him without notice.

As is the vogue of the Captain America line, within the broader Marvel brand, the tone here is that of espionage and political thriller. It’s rather splendidly graded to an almost Cold War stylisation and directed in suit by The Cloverfield Paradox’s Julius Onah. A peppy score by Laura Karpman, meanwhile, does well to inspire momentum in the film’s tone, if not quite the narrative, which isn’t just as clever as it hopes. Where Onah struggles, however, is in the capturing of gravity. As his action bounces around the globe, there’s little actual sense of the location changing or any real feeling of weight to the, supposedly monumental, actions of the characters within. It’s a coherent enough little romp but far from propulsive or pulse quickening.

Ford, at least, brings a certain heft to proceedings. A touch of class and star power energy. Certainly, his Ross enjoys the most compelling screen journey, even it – and the film in general – might have benefited from less revelatory promotional material. Against him, Mackie makes for a fair and fine enough action hero, agile in attack and stoic in all other regards. Unlike Evans’ Rogers, Mackie’s Sam Wilson hasn’t actually any super attributes and there’s something morbidly appealing about his fallibility in suit. Danny Ramirez makes for a fun addition as the new Falcon – so delicately dancing on the line of irritability – while Shira Haas cuts through nicely in the Scarlet Johansson shaped vacuum for a Black Widow convert. Both, one assumes, will return.

None of this, of course, comes close to resolving Marvel’s pervasive, longer term problems. There’s little in Brave New World quite brave enough to return the studio to anything like the world domination it once enjoyed. Yet, under Mackie’s stewardship, there’s a glint of the new. Perhaps there’s something in aspiring beyond the Endgame years. In harkening back to 2008, the film recalls a bygone era in which such blockbusters offered nought but fun because fun was enough. It still is.

T.S.