Oh Captain, My Captain

As I gushed quite enough about The Avengers on Tuesday, today I’ll keep my focus entirely on the actual (non-Avengers) parts of Captain America.

Let’s start off with the fact that it’s good. It’s not Iron Man good, but it’s almost Thor good, way better than some of the Spiderman or X-men movies that have been out in the last ten years, and a country mile better than Green Lantern.

Chris Evans manages to cast off his default wisecracking persona to bring humility and valour to Captain America. I know I said I wouldn’t mention the Avengers, but the character Evan’s portrays will play off against Tony Stark and Thor excellently. And whilst he’s great as Cap, he’s almost better as Steve Rogers, the plucky weakling who’s determined to not get pushed around by bullies. Here we see some excellent CGI, as Evan’s head is superimposed onto the body of a scrawny man-child. It jars a little at first, but that’s only because you know what Chris Evan’s should look like. If he had been an unknown, it would have appeared a lot smoother.

The supporting cast is solid. Sebastian Stan is breaking Hollywood as “Bucky” Barnes, Rogers’ best friend, and I wonder if seeds are being sown for an eventual “Winter Soldier” appearance in the next Captain America film. Dominic Cooper is suitably suave as Tony Stark’s father (or Grandfather, not sure of the timelines on this one), although his accent slips a couple of times. Tommy Lee Jones continues to sleep in Tupperware and gives good support as Steve’s army drill sergeant and Stanley Tucci consistently chews the scenery as Dr Erskine.

Relative newcomer Hayley Atwell manages to be a believable love interest, managing to make the character an attractive and appealing match for Rogers by playing on her strengths rather than making her weak and helpless. Then you have Hugo Weaving, giving an epic panto villain level performance as Red Skull (I’m sure we’ve not seen the last of him).

The film itself is a great balancing act. Book ended by Cap being discovered and thawed out in the present day, the majority of the film is (naturally) set in World War 2. After Rogers gets the Super Soldier Serum he becomes a poster boy for War bonds and then through a somewhat contrived (yet still entertaining) turn of events, he ends up leading a rag-tag team on covert missions against Hydra. Interesting side-note, in possibly the greatest attempt I’ve ever seen to establish an organisation as evil, at one point in the film Hydra is disavowed by the Nazis. That’s right, THE NAZI’S THINK THEY’RE TOO EVIL. Brilliant.

There’s lot’s of cross over with Thor (the same energy cube that turns up at the end of Thor plays a big part in this film), and overall it’s good watch with some solid action scenes.

Although it is primarily all set up for The Avengers.

(sorry).