morphion2

Eight years into Marvel Studios' multi-property film franchise and its increasingly convoluted continuity, a movie as good as "Captain America: Civil War" (2016) is truly and delightfully surprising. While I doubt it could stand alone, and is guilty of a few shoe- horned cameos and more than a few plot contrivances, the second instalment from Joe and Anthony Russo (directors of the previous and similarly impressive Captain America: The Winter Solider {2014}) is a success. As an action spectacle it is above par; as a springboard for future franchise films it is reinvigorating; and as a meditation on the problem of superheroes' power and sovereignty it is the best since Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" (2009). We are not likely to see critical reception that puts it in league with Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008), rather condescendingly hailed by non- superhero fans as something "more than a comic book movie" (Roger Ebert). But "Civil War" is every bit as engaged with themes of authority and morality as Nolan's seminal work, and borrows much credence from the Marvel Cinematic Universe's well-established lore and cast of characters. It is as close to the true, transcendent experience of comic book fandom as we have yet to see on the big screen.

Following the events of the sadly inferior "Avengers: Age of Ultron" (2015), Steve Rogers as Captain America (Chris Evans) leads a new team of superheroes in pursuit of a minor villain leftover from "The Winter Soldier", only to sustain a large number of civilian casualties. It's the final straw for the governments of the world, says long-absent Marvel player General "Thunderbolt" Ross (William Hurt, last seen in 2008's "The Incredible Hulk"). Now a superhero registration act is in order, rendering all enhanced individuals legally beholden to the United Nations and impotent to act without democratic approval. Humbled by the weight of failure from previous films, Tony Stark as Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) is in favour of the proposal. Rogers, ruffled by his intimate experience of governmental corruption from previous films, is suspicious, but might have agreed to compromise if not for the involvement of his life-long friend turned Soviet sleeper assassin, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Staan - the aforementioned Winter Soldier). Barnes has been framed for a terrorist bombing in South Africa and Rogers is alone in defending his innocence. With the help of a mystery malefactor (Daniel Bruhl), the rift between heroes grows into civil war...

The basic premise of this film was adapted from a cross-over Marvel comics event of the same name (published 2006-7), and represented a major paradigm shift in post-9/11 superhero narratives. This arose from the undeniable fact that it was becoming impossible to appreciate large-scale urban destruction without qualms, and that superheroes have always left large-scale urban destruction in their wake. It is something that has been addressed in previous films, particularly "The Avengers" (2012) and "Age of Ultron", in which writer-director Joss Whedon made a point of conflict containment and showed Rogers doing everything possible to clear the battleground of bystanders – maybe that way we could cathartically enjoy New York's decimation again. But the Avengers are making one hell of an omelette here. "You try to save as many people as you can," Rogers confesses. "Sometimes that doesn't mean everyone".

This is Captain America's polite way of using the phrase "collateral damage", a theme that has wormed its way into the heart of superhero culture over the last ten years, and to great effect. That "Civil War" takes an issue like collateral damage so seriously is its finest quality: we have here a film that does adhere to a fairly formulaic script wherein a villain turns the heroes against each other (seen in both Avengers movies), but not one that lets the heroes off that easily. While much of the story is somewhat contrived - utilizing the classic trope of villain-as-impossibly- prescient-mastermind-who-knows-what-every-character-will-do-every- step-of-the-way - the conflict at its heart is not. It is a very real ideological difference that exists between Rogers and Stark, and not a misunderstanding used to justify a series of fight scenes. "You're wrong, you think you're right, and that makes you dangerous," claims the film's most exciting cameo character. It doesn't matter who he's talking to.

At the same time, the movie remains a solid melodrama, such that we feel the personal stakes which all stories require to function at an emotional level. Stark and Rogers take their sides on principle that is not abstract, but informed by personal tragedy. Bolstered by thematic ties to the story's two main antagonists, "Civil War" works as drama as well as dissertation. This is all especially impressive given the studio mandates which must have been weighing upon it, to consolidate the plots and characters of Marvel's eleven preceding films and set up the seven films slated for release by 2019. This is a juggling act of economic, thematic and storytelling responsibility that is rarely executed with such aplomb in the arena of Hollywood blockbusters. It will make money and please fans, an increasingly difficult double threat for superhero cinema. And while it requires a baseline of fandom to operate as a good film, it does do it. It is a story about power; it is a story about people. After all, every story is.

Following a movie event like Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" (2008) is a dangerous game, but then Nolan is a dangerous player. His curious obsession with masculine identity, psychological schisms and the dark night of the soul gave "Batman Begins" (2005) a sense of edgy 'reality' that ingratiated him to critics and a good deal of the public, even if it alienated some hard-core Batfans with its customized and highly Nolan-esque take on the Caped Crusader. When his second installment braved the frontier of openly post-9/11 superhero parables, and in so doing gave the late Heath Ledger platform to truly wow audiences and critics the world over, the British director seemed to have galvanized 'superhero noir' as the new benchmark in comic book film adaptation. "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012) is his final word on the subject, and while this reviewer feels that it is not a film fit to win over any dissenters or greatly deter any fanatics, it is very largely successful in what it tries to do and its failings are certainly not for a lack of trying.

The first hour or so of the film is a whirlwind of plot necessities that, despite the running time of 165 minutes, probably needed another half an hour or so to unfold with sensicality. They involve introductions to John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) - a rookie cop raised in a city orphanage who apparently "still believes in the Batman", even though as far as the audience is concerned he may as well have just moved to Gotham last week – Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) – a cat-burglar who is therefore Catwoman – and Miranda Tate (Marion Cottilard) – a high society Gothamite monetarily invested in a renewable energy program at Wayne Enterprises that has apparently gone bust, even though it seems to work just fine. Excusing a twist in the tale that seems to be there for its own sake, however, Nolan and his co-screenwriter (also known as his brother Jonathan) do not really abide loose ends, and by the commencement of the film's some hour-long climax all the story elements that feel disparate and murky in the beginning have intertwined and solidified into the kind of philosophically powerhouse narrative that made the first two films so effective.

What makes the Nolan films effective is how they appropriated the inalienable tenets of the Batman legend in pursuit of an apocalyptic allegory about the post-9/11 western world. "Batman Begins" was a film about fear; the double edged nature of fear's power over a people and how the conquering of fear is invaluable for the pilgrimage of moral valor. "The Dark Knight" was a film about Terror, the kind George Bush Jr. declared war against in the early twenty-first century, and about how the greatest tool against Terror is the adherence to moral principles, even if sacrifice and compromise must be allowed for.

"The Dark Knight Rises" provides a more accurate depiction of terroristic motives in its central villain of Bane than the "The Dark Knight" did with The Joker, because he holds Gotham in contempt for its status as a symbol of American first-world 'imperialism'. There has been some critical backlash against Bane as a Villain Without A Face, but this severely undermines Tom Hardy's performance, which actually achieves remarkable presence through nothing but body-language, vocal theatricality and disturbingly expressive eyes. Even without a face, Hardy effortlessly paints a convincing portrait of one who wants to dismantle the lie of Harvey Dent's legacy and incite Gotham into class-warfare riots. He purports to "liberate" Gotham's people, but his ultimate goal is to feed Gotham false hope before destroying the whole darn thing and everyone in it. Bane's genuine ideological conflict with western civilization is centered around the power of hope in the eventuation of despair. More than it is a film about fear or Terror, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a film about hope.

In accord with the rest of the trilogy, Bruce Wayne is not the only protagonist whose arc is built around the movie's central thematic concepts. Even the arc supplied for Selina Kyle ends up justifying her seemingly arbitrary insertion into this filmic imagining by providing a suitably dubious object of moral faith for the fallen Dark Knight. She begins with similar outlook to Bane, but the Nolans don't buy into Ra's Al Ghul's assertion that criminals aren't complicated. Everyone, and everything, is complicated.

Oddly enough, it's this principle that is behind most of the shortcomings of the film. It's a little *too* complicated, with the rushed series of first-act events seriously paling in comparison to the emotional impact of the conclusion, and an aforementioned twist that doesn't make much sense. There are also a lot more impossible feats performed by Bruce Wayne here than before, including a near-superhuman healing ability. And where "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" stood alone very effectively, one can't help but feel that both films are practically required viewing for this one.

But none of that really outweighs the sheer, touching veracity of this finale and its philosophical/moral ambitions, which are all up to par with the predecessors and pay off a great deal of things with a genuine craftsmanship. This "Batman" series has always been about the power of symbols in a corrupted world and personal accountability in a society of structural shackles, and when Batman returns to Gotham at the top of the final act to brand his symbol in flames upon the city's largest bridge structure, we are reminded of the paradoxical purity of his message. Even as part of a system that is broken, even funded by a wealth that would perhaps do more good dispersed amongst the third world, even if no one ever knows his name, the Batman fights for the goodness of fallen people (be they cops, cat-burglars or orphans) who may otherwise have never had the chance to rise.

NOTE: The following comment is written under the assumption that readers are familiar with the franchise and its general plot arc.

Saw V is a pretty lackluster film, a retread of themes, plots, characters and even specific events from the previous films of the canon. It fails on a lot of levels, but the main one is its insistence on telling us things we already know. The identity of Jigsaw's operative in the police force was revealed at the end of IV (a much better film in every way), and if we even WANTED to know the reasons that this particular cop 'went over to the dark side', we certainly wanted it to be a much more interesting and involving story than the one V gives us. We could, and a lot of us probably already have supposed every generic plot point in this character's origins story. We wouldn't have guessed the specifics, but as usual, the specifics don't matter.

Once this recurring flashback tale of transformation has revealed itself to be pretty un-challenging, we're left only with the even blander present-day plot of The Other Cop (excluding the cutaway sequences of an ongoing five-person 'game', which is robbed by its very cutaway nature of any tension and which feels pretty irrelevant throughout). This non-flashback story has nothing to it: the cop who survived the last three films without being Jigsaw's buddy is onto the one who is, and he very stupidly spends all his time walking from dark room to dark room, talking to himself and failing to report his incriminating findings to anyone. Needless to say, things do not end well.

And it *is* needless to say this: that's another thing Saw V seems to forget. The film treats its fatalistic and unhappy ending as though it retains the shock that the first film's equally fatalistic and unhappy ending delivered. It doesn't. We are by now very, very wise to the franchise's policy on endings and closure, and we know that the good guys are all doomed. When we get what we know is coming, the natural response is to be quite profoundly unimpressed.

I loved the fourth Saw film. I thought it did really new and exciting things with a premise that didn't even originate with the intelligence that was eventually given it. I thought it made really relevant points about ideological warfare and the fundamental horror of terrorism. And I thought it set the series up for some great explorable terrain. What follows is a monumental backslide, a film that does nothing new and doesn't even revert to used material very well (fans who are just after gore are also going to be disappointed - there's not much of it). I came out of the theatre feeling like I was still waiting for the fifth Saw film to get made.