Captain America: Civil War (2016) - SPOILER-FREE Review

Editor’s Note: this is an old, unformatted, unedited review. The author’s opinion might not match the original thoughts written in this article.

Directed by: Anthony Russo and Joe Russo

Starring: Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Anthony Mackie, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Rudd

Runtime: 146 min

One of the most anticipated movies of the year, Captain America: Civil War is the story of how our superheroes take different sides on how to handle the chaos generated by all the past fights that destroyed cities and killed a lot of people. Some agree with some new laws established by the government, but the rest don't think that this is the best solution ... Therefore, we have war!

The Captain America series is, by far, my favorite: the first movie did really well in introducing this new hero and Captain America: Winter Soldier is considered by many the best Marvel movie so far because of its realism and a more serious path that they took this character into. This film follows that path, but this time, it brings ALL of the superheroes down to Earth and makes them feel responsible for what they've done.

I was concerned with the fact that they had so many characters because they needed to give reason to all of them to choose a side and I wasn't sure that they would be able to do it well ... However, they did! I was surprised with how serious, realistic and mature this movie was (along with all the usual moments of comedy we're used to). There was time for each character to have their own reasons to join either Captain America / Steve Rogers's team or Iron Man / Tony Stark's team and that made the movie so much more grounded, with real life consequences. It was a movie way beyond that ass-kicking fight scenes that most people remember and care about, it had real emotions and purpose, with all the friendship's colliding and a revenge path that didn't go well.

Now, this film is not perfect, there are minor issues here and there, but no one, anyone, can criticize the action present in this movie. The stunt team did a perfect, awesome job! There were some amazing choreographed fight scenes, most of it in-camera with no CGI, there were a lot of chase scenes and one-on-one combats that felt so incredibly real. Of course, they used CGI on explosions and all that stuff, but they really improved all of the stunt work done in previous films.

So, I have to talk about some actors and their characters: Tom Holland as Spider-Man / Peter Parker was my main worry after what I saw in that last trailer ... But Jesus, he was great! This is probably the best Spider-Man I've ever seen, the writing for him was perfect and the place where he came from was so humbly real and well-adequated to this character. Chadwich Boseman as Black Panther / T'Challa was bad-ass, I loved every scene he was in! Again, the directors gave him enough time for us to understand his motives and to why did he choose a side to fight for. After they tell his backstory, I was totally on his side, as I was for every single character!

The reason why that big airport battle was so awesome is because I cared for everyone that was there and that made every combat so entertaining to watch. Everyone, even the villain, had his own motivations and the film was so clear to demonstrate that, no one was there just because they needed to be since this was a big superhero clash. Also, Paul Rudd as Ant-Man / Scott Lang proved once again that he's pure awesomeness. Just saying.

This film handled the conflict between Captain America and Iron Man so well on all levels (physical, mental, political) that, at the beginning of the fight, I couldn't choose a side. All of that #TeamCap and #TeamIronMan campaign was just marketing because when you actually see the movie, you are behind every superhero's cause because you understand their motivations.

The ending didn't go as I wanted to, but I can't fault the movie for it, at least not yet. Also, Daniel Bruhl as Zemo could have done a lot better. It seemed he was there just to help the movie get from here to there and he wasn't very interesting, he even got boring at one point. The first 20/30 minutes are also very different from the rest of the film, the editing was not that great in major action scenes and it did bother me a little.

Still, I really think that the Captain America series is the best from Marvel so far. It's the only one where each movie got better than the last one and I can't say the same for the other series (Thor, Iron Man, The Avengers ...).

| A+ : 9.3-10 | A: 8.7-9.2 | A- : 8.0-8.6 | B+ : 7.3-7.9 | B: 6.7-7.2 | B- : 6.0-6.6 || C+ : 5.3-5.9 | C: 4.7-5.2 | C- : 4.0-4.6 | D+ : 3.3-3.9 | D: 2.7-3.2 | D- : 2.0-2.6 | F: 0-1.9 |