Starring: Chris Evans, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell, Hugo Weaving, Sebastian Stan and Stanley Tucci
Directed By: Joe Johnston
Screenplay By: Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Based On: the Marvel Comics character created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby
Produced By: Kevin Feige
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Rating: PG-13
Running Time: Approximately 124 minutes
Website: captainamerica.marvel.com
Budget: $140 million
Genre: Adventure, Superhero
Release Date: July 22, 2011
On the cover of Captain America’s first comic book appearance – 1941’s Captain America Comics #1, natch – the star-spangled Avenger is shown clocking Hitler, square in the jaw, with one red-gloved fist. It encapsulates the appeal the character has had in his 70 years of existence: here’s good, here’s evil and damned if the Captain – and, by extension, America itself – doesn’t know who the enemy is and how to take care of it. Times change, of course, but despite a multitude of writers assigning Cap their own political beliefs – right, left, or center – over the decades, former 90-pound weakling Steve Rogers has remained an icon, an aspiration if not a reality. Captain America tends to work best as an earnest, forthright adventurer in the mold of ‘30s serials, striking at smirking, menacing evil wherever it may lurk with a moral certitude that neither knows nor acknowledges a gray area.
To that end, the makers of Captain America: The First Avenger, director Joe Johnston and screenwriters Christopher Marcus and Stephen McFeely, place our hero in a fantasia fairytale version of 1940s New York City, where the impending existence of superheroes has already drastically altered the way the world looks. War is on, and there’s no moral ambiguity when there’s Nazis to smite. Puny Steve (Chris Evans) just wants to do his part in the war like his friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan of TV’s “Gossip Girl”), but finds himself stonewalled no matter how many Army recruiting stations he lies to. Steve’s given a second chance by a kindly scientist, German defector Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who sees in Steve the strength of character to participate in the government’s attempt to create a “super soldier” that can put down Hitler and his regime once and for all.
Tested and experimented on, Steve emerges from Dr. Erskine’s experiments stronger, faster, and practically able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. The interference of Nazi splinter group HYDRA (“Cut off one limb, two more will take its place!”) prematurely ends the U.S. Army’s quest for a super-powered army, much to the dismay of ornery General Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and Steve’s would-be crush, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). Reduced to an entertainment act at USO shows, “Captain America” still yearns to face the Nazis on the frontlines. He gets his chance when HYDRA head Johann Schmidt (The Matrix’s Hugo Weaving), called “The Red Skull” for reasons that become obvious halfway through the film, acquires a mystical artifact that may give his faction an edge over Hitler in the world domination department. With his mighty shield and a ragtag group of freed POWs in tow, Cap sets out to stop Red Skull and smash his plot for world domination (getting rid of Hitler is presumably next on his list).
Evans has lots of superhero experience; he was Marvel’s own Human Torch in two unfortunately mediocre Fantastic Four movies before this. A seemingly counter-intuitive choice for straight-arrow Steve Rogers, Evans gives Steve personality and sincerity instead of relying on his usual tricks of wisecracks and charm. Those familiar with the character’s comic roots will know how and where Captain America ends, as if the modern-set framing sequences don’t already point to Steve’s ultimate fate.
The movie marks Marvel Studios’ fifth and last piece of the larger cinematic universe set up in The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and two Iron Man movies, with the team-up movie The Avengers already due out summer 2012. Part of the appeal of these superhero adaptations is the nearly endless possibilities of in-jokes and appearances that can be teased from the comics, and Captain America is full of those for the attentive fan. At its heart, though, Captain America is a throwback adventure film about square-jawed heroes, cackling villains, and old-fashioned world-saving; it is about as accurate a depiction of World War II as Inglourious Basterds.
The movie makes no pretensions to the verisimilitude of war, with HYDRA Nazis shooting ray guns and a surreally grotesque Hitler stand-in for a villain. It doesn’t detract from Steve’s journey, which hits all the expected moments of crisis and introspection without clinging to cliché. Even Steve and Peggy’s tentative romance is treated with unexpected realism and tact. There are no forced, unearned moments of “I love you!” between two people who barely know each other that are typical for productions like this.
Captain America shares movie DNA with The Shadow, Indiana Jones, The Phantom, Sky Captain, and even Johnston’s own The Rocketeer. It’s a genre rarely attempted in movies these days – a quick look at most of those movies’ grosses will tell you why – so it’s refreshing to see it pulled off so skillfully and gleefully here. It’s hardly a flawless film: I do wish they hadn’t tried so hard to differentiate Red Skull from his Nazi roots (a good villain is a good villain, historical or not, Marvel) and the 3-D conversion is somehow even blander than Thor’s was. There’s not much groundbreaking about Captain America – for all its big-screen success, Marvel has yet to produce anything as transcendent as DC’s The Dark Knight – but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and treats its audience with more respect and intelligence than the average Michael Bay movie (or any Michael Bay movie, for that matter). Appropriate to its subject, Captain America wouldn’t have been out of place chopped into 10-minute clips and played between the matinee cartoon and the newsreel years ago, and it’s a welcome addition to a canon of characters that are pleasantly making the transition from page to screen.
3 Stars
