Captain America Review: O Captain! My Captain!

Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger. They’re the pillars upon which modern America was built and are brought to a vivid comic reality in Marvel’s Captain America: The First Avenger, the best and most unique of all Avengers lead-in movies thus far.

The time: 1942. The place: New York. Chris Evans is Steve Rogers, a brittle, gangly asthmatic liability for the Army, which the poor sod is trying desperately to get into. So desperate is Rogers that as the film opens, he is at attempt five, under a fifth fabricated birthplace, in the fifth recruitment center of the greater New York area. Upon yet another failure, he runs into his best and only friend, James “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), who bails Steve out of getting the piss knocked out of him in an alleyway by a lug three times his size. Despite his size, Steve’s heart is relentless. Even in this alleyway brawl, he doesn’t give up. It’s that indomitable spirit that gains the attention of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who gives Rogers the opportunity he’s always wanted – to join the Army under an experimental program to create the ultimate soldier. At boot camp, Rogers proves that while he may be out of his depth physically, his savvy and his heart set him above all other candidates for the program. It’s in this program where he meets Peggy Carter (Haley Atwell), a prickly Brit who gives Rogers the emotional boost he needs during the rigors of Boot and all the doubt that everyone has in him, summed up by Colonel Chester Phillips’ (Tommy Lee Jones) assessment of the kid: “Stick a needle in his arm and it’ll go right through him. He’s making me cry.” Ultimately, the experiment is a success and Rogers balloons into an American Adonis, chiseled to perfection with the ability to physically over-perform in any combat scenario. The success is met with resistance though, as a new threat presents itself from the underbelly of the Axis- Nazi’s Hydra division, the head of which has ties to the super-soldier program and is only known as The Red Skull.

Rogers may be ready to take on this new Red Menace, but Phillips is reluctant to give him the chance. Out of action, Rogers is relegated to the home front and, like anything unique or special, becomes a commodity of the U.S.; a symbol of Patriotism, but nothing more; or, as Rogers himself illustrates, a dancing monkey. Ultimately Rogers gets back into the action and when he does, he takes no prisoners. Like Spider-Man and Batman Begins before it, the first half of Captain America feels more genuine and heartfelt, the more human elements taking a backseat to the action in the latter sections, but it’s to be expected in a film like this. I personally envisioned a much grittier, Band of Brothers-esque Captain America (and I’d secretly like to still see this one day), but Joe Johnston imbues his take on the character with a heaping helping of good ‘ol Americana and it totally works. It’s that light-yet-dramatic tone that has made his The Rocketeer a modern day classic. Larger-scoped sequences are often overwrought with green screen compositing, but is passable given the serial tone of the movie.

Performances throughout are nothing if not strong and memorable. Chris Evans is thoughtful and articulate as Steve Rogers and Hugo Weaving lends the type of subtle nuances to Red Skull that made his turn as Agent Smith so memorable. Supporting players should also not be short-changed. Tommy Lee Jones steals virtually every scene he is in and Haley Atwell can communicate pages of character subtext with as little as a crinkle of her nose. But perhaps the greatest asset of Captain America is its time period. The past is an incredible place to set a comic book film in. It worked with finesse in X-Men: First Class and works just as well here (is it just wishful thinking on my part to hope that a cinematic rendering of 1602 is not far off?)

Subtextually, there is a strange Pro-Steroid, inject-the-scrawny-guy-with-fluid-to-bulk-him-out ideology that is never referenced but feels slightly uncomfortable despite the tonal lightness of the rest of the movie. Despite the fact that Rogers’ drug-induced buff-out is not the solution to his woes, the impact this might have subconsciously on male tween/teens with body dysmorphia issues is troubling, but won’t be the undoing of the film and is probably a little silly to talk about, but is worth mentioning. I wonder if the filmmakers themselves ever realized this at any time during production (interestingly enough, the US started experimenting with Anabolic Steroids around the period of World War II; whether this is a coincidence or not is anyone’s guess).

Iron Man tends to get the lion’s share of the popular vote, but of the canon of Marvel Studios outings, Captain America is their finest hour for my money. More than ever before, you begin to see how rich the Marvel universe is, how deeply the characters are interconnected, and how special these films will end up being at the end of the day. Captain America may be the first avenger, but he most certainly will not be the last.

Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures and IMDbPro