Film Review Captain America

FILM REVIEW – CAPTAIN AMERICA – THE FIRST AVENGER  2011

The Marvel comic book movie adaptations go from strength to strength. Captain America breaks from the usual formula by being set in the 1940’s, at the height of World War Two for much of its length.

There have been some dire TV movie attempts to make Captain America, but this version does it brilliantly, with some tremendous humour, genuine excitement and some stark downbeat elements.

Chris Evans is great as Steve Rogers, a walking Mr Muscle 9 stone weakling – who wants to help the war effort but lacks the health & fitness and physique to be a soldier like his best pal, Bucky Barnes, until he ends up enlisted in a super-soldier drug programme and finally gets his shot at glory. The super-drug has already been tried on a crazed German scientist, Johann Scmitt, who has mutated into The Red Skull, and supports the Nazi war effort. Hugo Weaving plays Red Skull with great humour, and his own agenda, over and above his Fuhrer’s own evil plans. When Nazis notice that the Skulls target map for his Tesserach vaporizing machine includes Berlin, the real nature of his plans becomes apparent. The Red Skull has his own army giving him Heil salutes with both arms, showing him to be twice as wicked as Adolph.

When Rogers becomes the first Super-soldier, we see Evans in his true muscular physique and realize that we have been watching a CGI modified version of him thus far.

A car, and submarine chase round Brooklyn follows, as a spy kills the scientist behind the Super Soldier programme, making Rogers the only one of his kind. Rogers’s gives chase round the streets, which are thrilling to me as the Brooklyn scenes were shot in Manchester, England, my home city. Audience members also spotted the locations, and whispered them to friends. A vintage car explosion captured on screen was one that I heard during a shopping trip. A real thrill was seeing the silly submarine chase on a local canal.

The army are reluctant to lose their only super-soldier and force Rogers into making propaganda dramas for War Bond promotions, trapping him in a parody of his impending Captain America guise. These scenes, featuring a great cheesy song called Star-Spangled Banner Man’, send up scenes in Clint Eastwood’s much more serious Flags Of Our Fathers.

Learning that the Red Skull has captured Bucky and other friends, Rogers, as Captain America, launches a one-man rescue mission, and we meet a terrific band of eccentric soldiers of several nations, including an English Tommy wearing a bowler hat instead of his tin helmet. These lovable eccentrics are sadly under-used.

Captain America is now seen in his full potential and gets new weaponry, including a motorbike full of gadgets worthy of James Bond, and his super-shield, made of some metal so rare the shield alone is made of it.

We see a relentless victory stampede of Captain America and his gang taking out the Skull’s various headquarters, going wrong only in a spectacular train fight where Bucky is killed.

Captain America finally takes down The Red Skull in a stealth bomber like plane, but the aircraft is left crashing into the Arctic ice. His final conversation by radio, offering a date to girlfriend, Hayley Atwell, is reminiscent of the opening of the David Niven classic, A Matter Of Life And Death. 

When Rogers is found frozen cryogenically in the ice, 70 years have passed and he wakes in present day New York, lamenting that he has missed his date. A stark, sombre note on which to finish matters, though a post credit sequence uniting characters from various Marvel films is used to promote the much promised Avengers movie, in which Captain America, Thor, The Hulk and Iron Man will all play prominent roles.

Captain America is hugely enjoyable hokum, with great roles by Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L Jackson, and a great cameo by Stan Lee as always.

The film on Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_The_First_Avenger

Arthur Chappell