Overly long and a tad darker than usual

PARANOIA, conspiracy theories and undemocratic behaviour fill the air in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, making it the most overtly political movie to date from the money-spinning Marvel Comics factory. The usual effects-driven set pieces and action-movie heroics - plus a comic book-worthy villain - are all in place, but our star-spangled hero also has more than his fair share of opaque political clutter to rummage through.

That means the poor Captain, an old-fashioned good guy newly-installed in a different world, is possibly out of his depth, what with an array of spies, assassins and most deadly of all - politicians - to contend with. But then again, anyone with his own museum exhibition (at The Smithsonian, no less) should possess the wherewithal to navigate his way through Washington DC - where friend and foe often turns out to be the same person.

The last time we saw Captain America (in his own movie, anyway), he had emerged from a deep freeze as Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a World War II-era weakling-turned-super soldier and the Allied answer to the Nazi threat of world domination. This time around, he's an integral member of Shield, the covert law-enforcement government agency run by Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson), battling a more shadowy enemy.