Captain America: The First Avenger kicks off with a solid build. It’s 1942 and World War II is well underway. For the frail, asthmatic and symptom-prone Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) all he wants to do is join the fight, but he’s been denied at every turn. Yet, he has heart and determination, and won’t take “no” for an answer. This determination earns him a spot in the Army after being recognized by Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) as a perfect candidate for a super soldier serum he’s devising.
So far, so good. However, once Steve Rogers gets his steroid boost and becomes Captain America this flimsy film turns into a ham-fisted cheese-fest I have no desire to watch again.
The central battle at the film’s core is not against Hitler, instead the villain here is Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), a commander in the German army responsible for weapons development and one so scary he even makes the Nazis nervous. Schmidt has been using his post as an opportunity to search for the ultimate power, a rumored power cube from the gods. This cube glows blue and is apparently pretty powerful stuff, but the audience is never given much information on it outside of a bunch of unintelligible mumbo-jumbo that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. What I do know is Schmidt and his personal scientist, Dr. Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), are able to harness the cube’s power and create death rays and other varieties of destructive weapons.
So, of course, Schmidt has to go down and Captain America is just the soldier to do it. His approach… brute force. Bust the door down and go in guns-a-blazin’. Considering Schmidt’s army, each dressed as the gimp from Pulp Fiction, is equipped with death rays that will disintegrate a human with one shot, you would think this would be a bad move. No worries, not all of them have said death rays and the ones that do tend to go down pretty easily or just aren’t very good shots. So, with a team behind him and his vibranium shield at his side, the Captain sets about cleaning Europe up.
At this point, I have to say, I had seen enough and had pretty much lost all interest. Not because of the seemingly random silliness on the screen — I can deal with that — but there was absolutely no life to this film outside of the little bit Hugo Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones tried so desperately to bring to it. Sure, there were explosions and a lot of throwing-the-shield-around montage moments, but it was all so dull I just didn’t care.
As Captain America, Chris Evans is toned down to a cardboard cutout. Evans was the best thing about the Fantastic Four films and I liked him in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Losers. He has charisma and personality to spare, yet none of it is on screen here. Instead we get the lifeless editing of a ripped-off Indiana Jones motorbike chase, magical zip lines from nowhere and when Captain gets the job done you can count on a soldier shouting out, “Hey! Let’s hear it for Captain America!” Speaking of which, this film works much better as a comedy than it does as any sort of action adventure.
Additionally wooden is Hayley Atwell (The Duchess) as the film’s love interest Peggy Carter. Atwell has the appearance of Kelly McGillis circa 1985 and reads her lines like she’s Keira Knightley. And as appealing as she may look, her character is dull as a board, often accompanied by a blank stare and late in the film she becomes what seems like the butt of a joke in a newsreel scene that may be one of the worst I’ve seen this summer. Add to that a kiss for luck I could hardly believe made the final cut, and I wouldn’t have thought the cheese factor could get any higher. I was wrong. Bombs labeled with the names of the cities they were meant to destroy were the true capper. I couldn’t hold my laughter in any longer.
The villainous Johann Schmidt is so paper thin not even Weaving could do much to save him, and if there was ever to be an entry in this recent rash of Marvel superhero films leading up to next summer’s The Avengers that felt like a footnote to something bigger, Captain America fits the description. Even without the intrusion of the S.H.I.E.L.D. organization that hampered Iron Man 2 and Thor, the fact this is a hastily made throwaway in the grand scheme of things is perfectly clear.
Director Joe Johnston (The Rocketeer, The Wolfman) tried hard to present a retro superhero film and for that reason I actually felt this would be the superhero film of the summer. Finally, something different. Something that didn’t begin with a fictional astrology lesson or characters we’ve seen countless times before. While the film remained true to these expectations the screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely felt like a poor attempt at a pulpy retro tale and Johnston and his team of editors seemed to be arbitrary with the scissors. The climax to scenes seemed to be missing, details when needed were never heard and the overall sense of heroism was rarely felt.
Captain America reminded me a lot of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, but it’s executed like Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor. It was lifeless, frequently cheesy and I had very little interest left once the skinny soldier became the human hulk. I don’t have any kind of hatred for it, but it’s definitely a film I won’t be angling to see again.
