Pat's Movie Reviews: Captain America

Minor spoilers follow. You've been warned.

Marvel really has been on a tear lately when it comes to their movie franchises. Ever since they opened up their own studio, they've been pumping out one good Comic Book flick after another. Iron Man started it all off, but they've managed to stay consistently good through everything that has been released since then. The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2 and Thor have all been fun, entertaining films. As they are slowly but surely building their way towards next year's Avengers film, Marvel has been building a solid foundation for each and every member of that team with their own solo films.

I am happy to report that Captain America is no different.

Once again Marvel has pulled off turning one of its most iconic heroes into a silver screen success. Captain America is a fun action adventure film with a good blend of character and heart thrown in to make you actually care about what is going on onscreen. My worry going into this was that they would skip past the character building intro and jump ahead to Steve Rogers receiving the super soldier serum and running off to go beat up some Nazi's, but I was totally wrong. The film takes its time getting to that point and instead spends the first 20 to 30 minutes of the film focusing on the character of Steve Rogers, the skinny kid from Brooklyn who keeps getting beaten up and pushed around. We learn that both of his parents died in the war, serving their country. His best friend Bucky is heading off to join the war, and poor Steve is having every door shut in his face as he tries desperately to get accepted into the army.

He's a man with a deep sense of honor and a drive to succeed. He doesn't believe in giving up and continues to re-apply to the army over and over again, even going so far as to lie on his admission forms as he applies in different cities. It is incredibly important that the film builds the character of who Steve Rogers is before he becomes the hero we know he will be. The underlying point that makes Captain America such an enduring figure is that Steve Rogers would be a hero, regardless of whether he ever received the super soldier serum or not. He's a hero because no matter what anyone else says or how badly he is treated, Steve Rogers is a decent, compassionate man who will always do what he can to help those in need, especially those being picked on by bullies.

The special effects used in this first part of the film are seamless too. Seeing Chris Evans digitally shrunk down to a skinny 90 pound frame wasn't nearly as off-setting as I thought it might be. The special effects team really did a great job of making him look natural in his smaller form. They also need to be commended for recreating all of the amazing 1940's style sets we see throughout most of the film. I actually had a hard time focusing on what was actually going on during certain scenes because I was too busy marveling at the beauty of 1940's Manhattan as Steve was chasing down an evil Hydra Agent.

Even after Steve comes out of the Super Soldier process, people still don't believe in him and he is forced to help out in the only way he can, by participating in USO shows to generate interest in the selling of war bonds. These scenes are really fun, and showcase a number of nods to classic Captain America moments such as him punching out Hitler. In the end though, Captain America must make his own way and prove his worth to his country. Once his best friend Bucky is captured, he jumps into action. He disobeys orders, goes behind enemy lines and rescues 400 men on his very first solo mission. Finally, the US military sees him for what he is worth.

What follows is a great action montage as we see Captain America fighting his way through the war, determined to wipe Hydra (the Nazi deep science division, and the film's main villains) off of the map. In the end, he comes face to face with the Red Skull, who is played very well by Hugo Weaving. I do feel that this part of the story was a little rushed, and I would have liked to have seen some more time spent building Cap's ties with his unit, which included Dum Dum Dugan and Howard Stark (Tony Stark's dad), but I understand that the film was trying to avoid being three hours long. Thus is the price that must be paid when you take the time to build your hero's origin. The rest of the film had to move at a bit of a break-neck speed as a result.

My only other real complaint was that the origin and the history of the Cosmic Cube wasn't really explained in the film. Once again, I feel that this has more to do with trying to fit Captain America into the ongoing line of Marvel films as the build towards the Avengers movie, but it does kind of annoy me that it is sort of expected that you saw the Thor film, and therefore have seen the Cosmic Cube before, so it doesn't need to be explained here. What if someone hadn't seen Thor? They'd be pretty confused by something that is fairly important to this film's plot. I personally wouldn't mind a bit of duplicate storytelling across films if it meant that single films stood a little stronger on their own and weren't completely dependent on the other Marvel films to make total sense. Overall, it's a minor point though as I'm certainly in the target audience of people who have and who will see every Marvel movie, so it didn't annoy me too badly that the Cosmic Cube just sort of showed up and was never explained fully. It's just a minor gripe really.

Other than that, I was very happy with how this film turned out. I loved the cast, I loved the costumes and the set pieces (especially the background scenery). The film has a runtime of 2 hours and 12 minutes and it felt much shorter than that to me due to a really engaging story and characters.

If Marvel were to decide to make Captain America sequels that keep him in the midst of World War II, I would have no problem with that at all.

Final Grade: A