4 out of 5

My wife & I were watching “FBI: Most Wanted,” and she’s a lateral thinker: why are the good guys not wearing gloves when the bad guys have sarin gas? And I said inimitably, “It’s network TV: it’s supposed to be stupid.”

While this simple oversight could amount to a mere continuity error, creatives really do appreciate it when viewers take their projects seriously – consider actor & Marvel Television alumnus Ethan Hawke’s recent call for more “offensive” art.

The general furor over “Captain America 4” (aka. “CA4”) – aside from the foreboding that delays & reshoots purport – seems to be that the filmmakers didn’t take enough thematic chances. Superhero fantasy, including comics, is one way of making sense of topical issues, but, for my money, I’d had enough thinking for the week, and wanted a big-budget spectacle with as little logicism required.

For a Marvel outsider who doesn’t let canon get in the way of a good night’s rest, CA4 serves its purpose, in the mindless way I wanted when I watched it. Audiences haven’t seen The Hulk be The Hulk on-screen in almost a decade, whether that’s Hulk or Not-Hulk, and for a treatment that amounts to “a race to stop Harrison Ford from turning into Not-Hulk,” director Julius Onah plates palatable tension, a brisk pace, coherent action, and – best of all – payoff.

Onah’s chief accomplice is “The Annihilation of Fish” composer Laura Karpman, whose dynamic soundtrack timekeeps – as opposed to handicapping – the story. The sound design is fantastic overall, and the Spanish-speaking actors (Danny Ramirez; Giancarlo Esposito) actually get to speak Spanish – always a fun surprise.

As Thaddeus Ross is such a central character here, his recasting is bittersweet: the late William Hurt didn’t live long enough to get the honour of headlining, but Grandpa Harrison is a worthy replacement, overfilling his scenes with effortless gravitas. There’s even a pleasing “Akira” visual reference, which surely adds legitimacy to anything or anyone that pulls it off, particularly a curmudgeonly senior like Ford.

Captain America 4’s advertising isn’t misrepresentational, so why project onto it? In one brief shot, Ramirez is playing a crisp-looking version of Williams’ “Defender” on an old Motorola flip phone – on a screen only double the resolution of the original monochromatic Game Boy – and he’s acting like he’s enjoying it. It’s a studio movie: it’s supposed to be stupid.