Captain America: The Winter Soldier': Behind the shield

The creators of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" have something fresh and bold: They have taken Captain America (Chris Evans), the engagingly square strongman from the flag-waving '40s, and planted him in the black-ops cynicism of the present day, where the villain isn't some over-the-top mastermind but, in fact, the very military-industrial complex he's out to defend. He now faces an ominously timely faceless evil.

 "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is the first superhero film since the terrorist-inflected "The Dark Knight" that plugs you right into what's happening now. Told in enjoyably blunt, heavy-duty strokes, the movie doesn't try for the artistry of "The Dark Knight" -- it's action-fantasy prose, not poetry. Yet there's a hell-bent vitality to its paranoia.