Can’t Marvel at this sequel

Sam (Anthony Mackie), the new Captain America, meets with newly elected US President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford), and finds himself in the middle of an international incident. He must unravel the reason behind a nefarious global plot before the true mastermind has the entire world seeing red.

Sam, Joaquin and Isaiah are invited to join President Ross at the White House, where Isaiah is hijacked through ‘mind control’. He then attempts to kill the President and that makes him an enemy of the state. It’s up to Sam and Joaquin to prove their friend’s innocence and find out who’s behind the plot.

The bad guys want to sabotage President Ross’ efforts to equitably share the Celestial’s resources with the rest of the world’s leading nations.

The action scenes in ‘Brave New World’ are not well orchestrated and the quality of fight sequences varies to a great extent. There’s not much momentum here either. The hand-to-hand combat scenes are too slow and ordinary.

The only sequence that stands out is the large-scale setup featuring Mackie piloting a plane and engaging in dogfights with fighter jets, racing to stop missiles from striking their aircraft carrier.

Otherwise, the movie falls way too short as far as the action sequences go. Other than some recycled stunts, there’s not much visual ambition either.

Tim Blake Nelson’s Samuel Sterns is possibly the weakest villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. His superpower is that he’s the world’s greatest actuary, and his only weapon is a 1958 slow-jam by The Fleetwoods.

Giancarlo Esposito’s Side-winder adds some physicality to the action, but the character doesn’t fit into the story organically and therefore seems out of place. The plot feels cobbled together, scenes don’t match up and the real-world implications are not addressed with any great ambition.

‘Brave New World’ doesn’t really have a moral core even though it trumpets its topicality. Wilson is Black, and he never took the Super-Soldier Serum that made Rogers Captain America, and so he is more human in his endurance but that alone is not a winning gambit.

Sam’s anxieties do not get dramatised the way they should. Even Sam’s decision to do business with Ross, the obsessive General who spent a lifetime pursuing the Hulk and others, trying to ruin the Avengers, is questionable. This film feels shallow and obligatory.

‘Brave New World’ is neither exciting, nor thrilling. It is not creative either. Even cutting-edge visual effects fail to power the engagement.