In terms of cinematic adaptation, Captain America is one of Marvel's most inherently difficult characters. How do you make a person who is so po-faced and sincere likeable enough for modern day audiences? The first movie in the Captain America series, subtitled The First Avenger, didn't address this issue all that much because it didn't need to - being set in the 1940s, it was expected of the Captain to be uber patriotic anyway. The follow-up, subtitled The Winter Soldier, had no choice but to make the Captain contemporary. And yet in its attempts, it succeeds, crafting one of the best MCU so far, with Chris Evans putting in his most impressive performance yet. The trick, then, came with the notion of riffing on Steve Rogers' man out of time dilemma, and indeed, The Winter Soldier emerges as a highly rewarding comic book movie because it plays to the humour inherent to the situation... and it makes the Captain human, too. So here's a comic book movie rendered in the vein of a '70s political thriller (the kinds Robert Redford would appear in - and yes, he's in this movie), complete with intelligent plottings, amazing action sequences, a great sense of humour and Scarlett Johansson coming into her own as Black Widow. Dark and yet never enough to ruin the fun, this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe on top form.