Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is so desperate to go to war that he'd make a perfect pin-up for Uncle Sam - if, that is, he wasn't an asthmatic weakling. After his best mate James "Bucky" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) is signed up, a dejected Rogers is about to try (for the fourth time) to enlist when he is hand-picked by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), from the government's Strategic Scientific Reserve, for an experiment.
He is to become one of "a new breed of super-soldiers", as Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) puts it. Assisted by SSR officer Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Erskine and Phillips prepare Rogers for his transformation. In the lab, Erskine is, in turn, assisted by military inventor Howard "father of Tony" Stark (Dominic Cooper).
Meanwhile, in deepest darkest Austria, the nefarious Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is busily working on no-good technology in the Nazi's deep science division, HYDRA.
We know Schmidt is a bad dude because he listens to Wagner while having the gnomelike Dr Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) do his bidding: to wit, harnessing the power of the Tesseract, a glowing cube nicked from Odin's fine china cabinet, which he hopes will give him the edge over his soon-to-be former boss, Mr Hitler.
(Hey, something tells me a certain member of The Avengers isn't going to like that...)
However, Schmidt doesn't count on Erskine turning Rogers into a one-man army, and soon - after a humiliating detour on the war bonds circuit (with a hilarious morale-raising song, The Star Spangled Man With A Plan, by the legendary Alan Menken) - Cap is coming for Schmidt.
Schmidt and Rogers are both products of the same experimental science - but where Erskine's serum's magnifying powers brought out the best in Rogers, it amplified the worst in Schmidt. You see, when he's not listening to Wagner, Schmidt likes to shake off his disguise and show his game face: he is Red Skull.
And, wouldn't you know it, he has a few plans for HYDRA: total world domination. Good luck with that, sir!
Evans is great as the decent, friendly Rogers - "a good man", as Erskine puts it. Of course, this isn't Evans' first time in the filmic Marvel universe; he played the Human Torch in the two Fantastic Four movies (tangential fun fact: Human Torch and a fake Captain America faced off Marvel Comics' Strange Tales #114 in 1963), but he's got more to work with here.
As the delightfully over-the-top Red Skull, Hugo Weaving has the most fun playing a noseless villain since Ralph Fiennes lopped his off as Voldemort; he struts around his various HYDRA facilities in polished jackboots, hissing evil one-liners like Werner Herzog.
The supporting cast is strong, too: Jones and Tucci ham it up and share the film's best lines, while Atwell gives Carter a touching combination of British steeliness and doe-eyed vulnerability. Most of all, Cooper is a hoot as the dapper Stark; it's a shame we have to return to Robert Downey Jr as his grown-up son from here on in.
(A minor casting quibble: Cooper and Stan look - except for Stark's moustache - nearly identical; in some of the more frenetic action scenes it takes a moment to work out just who is who.)
The script is relatively snappy, and there's a lovely, painterly quality to Shelly Johnson's cinematography; at times it looks like a 1940s movie poster or matte painting come to life. A few action set-pieces clearly designed for 3D - Cap's shield flying at the screen, for example - are hokey in 2D (and, one could argue, 3D).
Despite all this, it's a strangely muted film. Some have chalked this down to its being, effectively, the final placeholder before The Avengers, but that's an ungenerous assessment. Rather, director Joe Johnston and Evans have almost made Cap too soulful; introspective to the point where the action scenes are almost (almost) incongruous.
Kenneth Branagh managed to finesse that combination of soul and action in Thor, the most recent Avengers "prequel", but Asgardians seem a more natural fit for superhero existentialism than US Marines.
In more daring hands than Johnston's, Captain America could have been a thrilling tale of wartime derring do; instead, it's a good if occasionally workmanlike adventure flick that gives Chris Evans the chance to finally show his mettle.
And, yes, there's an Avengers teaser after the credits.
- three stars
Source: The Vine
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