#Flacon and winter soldier movie#

Bradley acts as Sam’s lighthouse through a fog of pain, and their scenes together are heartbreakingly raw. He’s matched perfectly by Carl Lumbly as Isaiah Bradley, a Korean War veteran who suffered at the hands of a racist system decades ago. Given much more room that he’d have in a movie, Mackie has the ability to convey emotion and inner turmoil through glances and subtle movements. The strength of this exploration comes from both sharp writing and a strong leading performance from Anthony Mackie. Of Marvel’s many on-screen triumphs, its treatment of Sam Wilson’s story is among its strongest and most admirable. This is an abnormally heavy topic for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to delve into, and while it's not an academic-grade dissection, by examining the issue through a superhero lens the message is made clear and accessible to all. For a Black man to take on that role – one that’s emblematic of a nation that’s long been unable to address its institutional racism – carries disturbing implications that haunt Sam throughout The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s six hour-long episodes. The character arc of Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) deals with his struggle to follow in the footsteps of Steve Rogers, his departed friend whose last act in Avengers: Endgame was to pass onto Sam the Captain America shield. The Falcon and The Winter Soldier’s most prominent and well-explored theme is that of race and Black America. Even so, its ambition frequently wins the battle over its uneven quality and lacklustre management of its many components. Often closer to the run of a (good) Netflix Marvel show than anything seen on the big screen, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier is a surprisingly weighty, frequently engrossing show – though every so often it flies too close to the sun and demonstrates an inability to restrain its scope to a level that can be adequately explored in the time it has.

The story of Sam Wilson and James “Bucky” Barnes is less a comic book villain-busting adventure and more an examination of institutional racism, radicalisation, and the looming shadow of lost heroes.

#Flacon and winter soldier movie#

If you believed The Falcon and The Winter Soldier would be, as its marketing seemed to suggest, a standard Marvel movie chopped into six television-sized pieces, then the reality certainly comes as a surprise.