- UK release: April 2016
- Director: Anthony Russo · Joe Russo
- Writers: Christopher Markus · Stephen McFeely
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
- Genre: Superhero action thriller / political conflict drama · Runtime: 147 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Chris Evans (Captain America: The First Avenger, Snowpiercer) as Steve Rogers / Captain America; Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) as Tony Stark / Iron Man; Sebastian Stan (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) as Bucky Barnes; Chadwick Boseman (42) as T’Challa / Black Panther
- Rotten Tomatoes: 91% critics / 89% audience · My rating: 8.5 / 10
The third Captain America film arrives carrying a problem most franchises would kill for and few survive: too many heroes. Marvel has spent eight years and a dozen films assembling a roster, and the obvious next move is to fill the screen with all of them and call it a party. What the Russo brothers do instead, having already turned The Winter Soldier into the closest thing this universe has to a Seventies conspiracy thriller, is point all that accumulated star power inward. The result is less a team-up than a divorce, and it is the most controlled, most adult film Marvel has yet released.
The setup
After one mission too many leaves civilians dead, the world’s governments decide the Avengers can no longer answer only to themselves, and draw up an accord to put them under United Nations oversight. Tony Stark, sick with guilt over the damage his side has done, signs without much argument. Steve Rogers, who has watched institutions he trusted turn rotten, will not. The disagreement is principled and survivable until Bucky Barnes, Steve’s oldest friend and a brainwashed assassin still half inside someone else’s programming, is named for an atrocity, and Steve chooses the man over the law. From there the argument stops being about policy and becomes about who you stand beside when the cost is everything. The film keeps its larger reveals back, and so will I.
The cast
Evans and Downey carry this, and the film is smart enough to know it. Evans plays Rogers as a man whose decency has hardened into stubbornness, certain he is right in a way that is starting to look like a flaw. Downey gives Stark the rawest work he has done in the suit, a rich man hollowed out by the thought that his cleverness keeps getting people killed. Their fight, when it lands, is wounding because the film has earned it. Around them the ensemble is handled with real generosity: Sebastian Stan’s Barnes is all coiled wariness, a weapon trying to remember how to be a person, and Chadwick Boseman walks in as T’Challa and quietly takes a scene or two off everyone, regal and grieving and dangerous. The film also finds room for a new Spider-Man, played with motormouthed teenage delight, who turns up, steals fifteen minutes, and leaves you wanting the solo film.
The craft
The Russos shoot action with a clarity that has become rare in this kind of cinema. The early Lagos sequence is close, kinetic and legible; you always know who is where and why it matters. The centrepiece, an airport confrontation between two splintered halves of the team, is the best superhero set piece yet committed to film, twelve characters in motion and not one of them lost in the noise, the choreography witty and the stakes never quite tipping into the lethal. It is staged for delight, and it delivers. Henry Jackman’s score does its work without showing off, and the film’s tone holds a difficult line: heavy enough to make the betrayals hurt, light enough that the jokes still land. At 147 minutes it has a great deal to carry, and only occasionally feels the weight.
How it stacks up
The obvious comparison is the Russos’ own The Winter Soldier, and this is the better film, broader in scope but every bit as interested in the politics of trust and accountability. Where it really distinguishes itself is against Batman v Superman, released only weeks earlier and chasing a similar idea of heroes at war with one another. That film treated the conflict as a brooding inevitability; this one builds it from character, so that by the time the two leads are trading blows you understand exactly how each got here and can see the case for both. It is closer to a John le Carre adaptation than to a comic crossover, an espionage story about loyalty and institutional control wearing a cape.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are close to united, sitting around 91%, with audiences a shade behind at 89%, and the praise is landing where it should: the grounded conflict, the airport sequence, the arrival of Black Panther and Spider-Man. The recurring reservation is that the villain’s scheme is needlessly intricate and that the film occasionally strains under its own roster. Both are fair. But the consensus here is one I largely share, which does not always happen with this studio, and the small gap between critics and audiences feels like nothing more than franchise fatigue talking.
Verdict
This is Marvel operating at the top of its craft: a blockbuster that trusts its audience to follow an argument, takes its characters’ convictions seriously, and pays them off with a confrontation that costs something. The plot machinery creaks in places and the villain is more device than menace, but the loyalty thriller underneath is genuinely gripping, and the airport sequence alone is worth the ticket twice over. It is enormously rewatchable, it understands espionage and divided allegiance better than most films that set out to be about exactly that, and it is the rare comic-book film I expect to return to for the drama rather than the spectacle. 8.5⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, including IMAX and 3D screens.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the two leads’ rupture here became the emotional foundation the Russos built on in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and its follow-up, and both T’Challa and this Spider-Man went on to anchor major films of their own. Civil War has settled in as one of the most respected entries in the franchise, frequently named alongside The Winter Soldier as a high point. It is now available on disc and digital, and streams on Disney+.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate violence. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: Frequent scenes of moderate violence include battles between Captain America, the Avengers and various enemies. These fight scenes include shield strikes and martial arts punches and kicks. Some characters are shot or struck with knives. However, the majority of scenes lack visible injuries or blood.
Threat and horror: There is a scene in which a man is interrogated by being suspended upside down over a sink filled with water. There are several explosions in which vehicles and buildings are destroyed.
Language: There is some mild bad language (‘son of a bitch’, ‘shit’, ‘pissed’, ‘ass’, ‘hell’, ‘goddamn’).
Injury detail: Some scenes show small cuts and blood on faces or blood staining clothes; however, there is no focus on blood or injuries.
Suicide and self-harm: A man attempts to take his own life but the gun he is using is pushed away from him before he can fire.
Alcohol and smoking: Adult characters drink alcohol.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
