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Captain America: The First Avenger
| Released |
29 July 2011 |
| Director |
Joe Johnston |
Starring
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Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper, Richard Armitage, Stanley Tucci, Samuel L. Jackson, Toby Jones |
Writer(s)
|
Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely |
| Producer(s) |
Kevin Feige, Amir Madani |
| Origin |
United States |
| Running Time |
125 minutes |
| Genre |
Action, adventure, sci-fi |
| Rating |
PG |
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God bless America!
So The Dark Knight Rises (AKA Inception with capes) recently managed to set the internet alight with a mere teaser trailer. One can only imagine the hysteria that will accompany its release next year. This summer though has belonged to Marvel and gosh it’s been fun! While Christopher Nolan busts a gut to drag the Caped Crusader further into the shadows, the Marvel universe has given us unashamed crowd-pleasers with lashings of camp humour, audacious re-writings of world history and straight-forward moral messages. Following Thor and X Men: First Class, Captain America: The First Avenger delivers on the promise of its predecessors. While it doesn’t quite reach the camp majesty of Thor, it is a thoroughly enjoyable romp with lots of style.
The story begins in 1942. The weak and sickly Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is desperate to enlist in the American army but is rejected time after time. A chance meeting with Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) finally gives him his break and Rogers is enlisted into an experimental scheme to create the ultimate soldier. Rogers becomes Captain America and takes on the maniacal Nazi commander Johann Schmidt AKA Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and his occult organisation, Hydra.
Much like its titular character, the film is dumb, likeable and impressively enhanced. There are plenty of good one-liners (particularly from a typically gruff Tommy Lee Jones), a love interest that actually has a personality (Hayley Atwell), and a wide range of entertaining German accents, some good (Weaving and Toby Jones), some verging on ‘Allo ‘Allo (Tucci). The costume design needs to be singled out for praise and the environments, from 1940s New York to Hydra’s lair, are wonderfully realised. The CGI work of transplanting Evans’ features on the initially puny Steve Rogers is also excellently done; all in all the film looks fantastic.
Captain America works on its own terms as a stand alone film but cleverly, it also does a great job of establishing the ties it has with the rest of the Marvel universe just in time for next years Avengers movie (to be written and directed by Joss Whedon). If that movie continues to build upon the groundwork set this summer, I for one can’t wait: high camp over Caped Crusader any day!
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Linda O’Brien |
