'Captain America: The First Avenger' review by Jake Boyle
For somebody who spends about 10% of every day gushing about how much I love Marvel, it's a personal failing that it's taken me over three years to watch any of the Captain America films. The character's never appealed me, due to nauseating patriotism and a pretty uninteresting backstory, but his appearance in Avengers Assemble and a delightful cameo in Thor: The Dark World has made it clear that I should at least give him a try.
The crucial difference between Cap's first solo outing and the films mentioned above is humour, or namely the former's lack of it. While Chris Evans delivers every droll comeback he's given with perfect capability, there's not a lot of humour to sustain the film through it's most familiar and generic moments, which there are more than a few of. The initial transformation from an eager but scrawny scarecrow of a figure (the CGI used to shrink Chris Evans down to such a meagre build are fantastic) to the beefed up superhero is done smartly, pushing its 'anybody can be a hero' message just shy of breaking point, but once he is combat ready, things get less interesting. The Marvel Cinematic Universe's previous outings, barring the equally underwhelming The Incredible Hulk, compensated for similar problems with humour, charisma and style, but there's only a small amount of these to be found here. The action sequences aren't fantastic either - a fighting style predominantly built around shield-based combat doesn't leave you with a multitude of options - but they're done competently enough. It would have been nice to see one or two more of them, especially given a disappointing segment where the film's entire military campaign finale is mostly reduced to a montage.
The First Avenger isn't just a dumb action flick though, possessing evident smarts through its visual jokes (Cap using a taxi door with a star logo in the centre as a shield, Arnim Zola's face initially appearing onscreen as a holographic projection) and the mind-over-muscle mentality of its hero, although he does certainly find more than a few uses for muscle too. Gratifyingly, the patriotism has been reigned in to a degree where it can't really irritate, but one could argue that this defeats one of the major points to the character. The action is often a little reliant on explosions, and they don't appear to have been spectacularly rendered for such a big budget movie. It's a fairly well-written movie, with dialogue that isn't especially memorable but certainly isn't clunky or overly po-faced. The performances are all up to scratch all round, but nobody's particularly excellent, apart from the eternally sardonic Tommy Lee Jones, who doesn't exactly try very hard, but an actor of his calibre doesn't really need to in order to give an entertaining performance.
Captain America: The First Avenger is a moderately entertaining but pretty forgettable movie, especially when compared to its other Marvel brethren. It feels more like a weak attempt to replicate Indiana Jones (handsome professional Nazi-puncher tracking down a mysterious MacGuffin) than a superhero movie, and nothing else about the film has anything particularly definitive or original. In most regards, the film is so-so, with a few elements being less successful and even fewer being better. Avengers Assemble proves that Captain America can be funny and engaging whilst remaining true to the all-American hero of the comic books. This film does not.
The crucial difference between Cap's first solo outing and the films mentioned above is humour, or namely the former's lack of it. While Chris Evans delivers every droll comeback he's given with perfect capability, there's not a lot of humour to sustain the film through it's most familiar and generic moments, which there are more than a few of. The initial transformation from an eager but scrawny scarecrow of a figure (the CGI used to shrink Chris Evans down to such a meagre build are fantastic) to the beefed up superhero is done smartly, pushing its 'anybody can be a hero' message just shy of breaking point, but once he is combat ready, things get less interesting. The Marvel Cinematic Universe's previous outings, barring the equally underwhelming The Incredible Hulk, compensated for similar problems with humour, charisma and style, but there's only a small amount of these to be found here. The action sequences aren't fantastic either - a fighting style predominantly built around shield-based combat doesn't leave you with a multitude of options - but they're done competently enough. It would have been nice to see one or two more of them, especially given a disappointing segment where the film's entire military campaign finale is mostly reduced to a montage.
The First Avenger isn't just a dumb action flick though, possessing evident smarts through its visual jokes (Cap using a taxi door with a star logo in the centre as a shield, Arnim Zola's face initially appearing onscreen as a holographic projection) and the mind-over-muscle mentality of its hero, although he does certainly find more than a few uses for muscle too. Gratifyingly, the patriotism has been reigned in to a degree where it can't really irritate, but one could argue that this defeats one of the major points to the character. The action is often a little reliant on explosions, and they don't appear to have been spectacularly rendered for such a big budget movie. It's a fairly well-written movie, with dialogue that isn't especially memorable but certainly isn't clunky or overly po-faced. The performances are all up to scratch all round, but nobody's particularly excellent, apart from the eternally sardonic Tommy Lee Jones, who doesn't exactly try very hard, but an actor of his calibre doesn't really need to in order to give an entertaining performance.
Captain America: The First Avenger is a moderately entertaining but pretty forgettable movie, especially when compared to its other Marvel brethren. It feels more like a weak attempt to replicate Indiana Jones (handsome professional Nazi-puncher tracking down a mysterious MacGuffin) than a superhero movie, and nothing else about the film has anything particularly definitive or original. In most regards, the film is so-so, with a few elements being less successful and even fewer being better. Avengers Assemble proves that Captain America can be funny and engaging whilst remaining true to the all-American hero of the comic books. This film does not.
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