Reviews

While the real America has been flexing its muscles in various parts of the Middle East over the last ten years, Captain America the movie disappointingly failed to pack a similar punch.

Deemed too weak and scrawny for military service, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is selected for a special military science project run by Howard Stark (Iron Man's dad, played by Dominic Cooper), where he is pumped up to department issue standard and given a bulletproof shield and costume. So far, so good. America during the wartime is great; whether on the frontlines or back home on the streets of Brooklyn, you know there will be desperate damsels single and mingling against a backdrop of khaki and green – and for the most part these scenes are done quite well.

It doesn't take long for Redskull (Hugo Weaving playing a guy who literally has a red skull for a head) and his troops to start causing havoc for the Americans, and naturally it's up to the boy in blue to save them. An all-too-short but excellent montage of Captain America's adventure's during the war adds flavour, the motorbike and pistol being iconography of a true American man, but it fails to re-capture an audience already lost.

Chris Evans does sit well as the blue-bonneted Cap, as does most of the supporting cast: Tommy Lee Jones as the barrel-gutted, grizzled general, Stanley Tucci in an all-too-brief role as zee German doktah who verks for zee Amerrikans, and Sebastian Stan as the Captain's boyhood friend from Brooklyn, Bucky Barnes. But as soon as I saw lipsticked babe Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), the story's love interest, running through the bush shooting a Thompson, my heart sank. Throw in the atypical badass Redskull, blue plasma rays that can immediately disintergrate a man, and a bunch of Germans dressed like stormtroopers and you have a recipe for cliché – or a movie titled "WTF".

I will admit there were a few good scenes, and indeed it deserved to knock Fairy Potter off its throne at the box office, but it lacked both the wit and story speed seen in Iron Man and the seriousness seen in The Dark Knight. Of course, no movie fits everyone's tastes perfectly (the beforementioned film being the glowing exception), but Captain America felt a tad camp. Slightly "family friendly".

The final scenes with Samuel L. Jackson drew me straight back in, only briefly, enticing us with the lead up to the impending Avengers movie, which seeks to draw together a bunch of Marvel heroes, including the previously seen-on-screen Iron Man, Thor, and Hulk. Hopefully that will take the best parts of all the latest origin stories and create a masterpiece, but only time will tell.

Satrring Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Stanley Tucci
Written by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Directed by Joe Johnston