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Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War finds Steve Rogers leading the newly formed team of Avengers in their continued efforts to safeguard humanity. But after another incident involving the Avengers results in collateral damage, political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability, headed by a governing body to oversee and direct the team. The new status quo fractures the Avengers, resulting in two camps—one led by Steve Rogers and his desire for the Avengers to remain free to defend humanity without government interference, and the other following Tony Stark’s surprising decision to support government oversight and accountability.

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The bad news is, there are about ten movies going on in "Captain America: Civil War," which is at least seven too many. The good news is, most of them are fun, and there are enough rousing moments to elevate the movie to Marvel's top tier.

Although Thor, the Hulk and other recurring characters have gone missing this time (with somewhat vague explanations for their absence), nobody's going to mistake "Civil War" for a chamber piece. Trailers sold this installment as a tale of intra-Avengers warfare, set off by the government's demand that Captain America (Chris Evans) allow the arrest of his old friend The Winter Soldier, aka Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), an assassin whose moral compass has been scrambled by brainwashing, so that he can be punished for his presumed role in a terrorist attack. And it is that. But only some of the time.

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All that said, this is a satisfying film that takes its characters but not itself seriously, and mixes sequences of wonder, visual wit and pathos in with the world-building and dramatic housekeeping. Reuniting the Cap creative team of directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, "Civil War" gets better as it goes along, both as an action movie and a sprawling ensemble. I've seen reviews complaining that no character gets enough screen time, but to me the distribution felt just about right. We know a lot about the established characters by now. There's not much this film needs to say about Peter Parker except that he's a lovable wise-ass spider-teen who lives with his Aunt May (51-year old Marisa Tomei, looking more like Aunt February) and has only been slinging web for six months. Nor does this story require much more of Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) but that he act starstruck by Tony and Cap and the gang and try too hard. Black Panther, aka T'Challa—subject of an upcoming Ryan Coogles solo movie—is defined by his righteous anger over an injustice perpetrated against his family and his nation, and that's exactly where the character needs to be for this film.

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The action is solid, sometimes inspired. The best setpiece in "Winter Soldier," Cap taking out a bunch of would-be assassins in an elevator, had a frenzied smallness that was much more exciting than watching helicarriers crash and monuments crumble; it seems to have inspired the better action scenes here—not just a stairwell punch-fest that finds Bucky swinging from a torn-up stretch of railing like Tarzan on a vine, but in a bigger, louder, wilder clash between Avengers (including emergency ringers Spider-Man, Ant-Man and Black Panther) on an airport runway. Although the cliched handheld, whipsaw-crazy action still lacks beauty and personality (a problem throughout Marvel's filmography, which has an assembly line quality) it's clean and exact, it makes clever use of the various heroes' powers, it's more comedic than vicious (Buster Keaton and Steven Spielberg are clear influences), and it leaves no doubt about the characters' angles and methods of attack, where they are in relation to one another, and what's at stake.

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There are more than a dozen major characters and another dozen minor ones, including Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and Spider-Man (Tom Holland), all running, flying, stomping and blasting through a long, lumpy story inspired by the 2006 Civil War graphic novel arc. Thematically, it's potluck. Like "Avengers: The Age of Ultron," "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Iron ," "Civil War" is simultaneously about the ramifications of US intervention in a post-9/11 world; the responsibility of private military contractors (which is basically what the Avengers are here) to defer to their government and the United Nations; the question of whether civilian casualties negate the righteousness of a noble mission; the allure and price of vengeance; and individuals' ongoing, never-finished struggles to understand how their pasts drive their present-tense actions. (Several characters confess that they act from compulsion and then find ways to rationalize it.)

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The film is directed by Joe Russo and Anthony Russo and stars Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America, Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man, Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier, Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon, Chadwick Boseman as T'Challa/Black Panther, Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, Paul Bettany as Vision, Don Cheadle as James Rhodes/War Machine, Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye, Paul Rudd as Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Daniel Brühlas Helmut Zemo.