This is a move about a guy in a red, white, and blue jump suit that after taking some super serum with a "Vita-Ray" chaser runs around fighting Nazi-esque soldiers, so the potential for epic failure was incredibly high.
Would it surprise you to hear they beat the odds?
I
really liked
Captain America. I had at least as much fun with this movie as I did with the recent
X-Men flick, and that is saying something.
Chris Evans truly proves himself as an actor here. Despite being the role of a costumed super-hero, Evans brought a sense of humility to a role that could of easily been more "WE'RE NUMBER ONE!, WoHooo!!".
That can honestly be said about the entire film. A story about a man that proudly wears the American flag motif all over his uniform could have been more propaganda than anything but this film was, dare I say, subtle.
The rest of the cast was equally strong without any true stand-outs beside Evans himself. Tommy Lee Jones does his usual schtick of barking one-liners sarcasms. (I don't think he is so much an actor anymore and more of a just a guy who likes to dress up, but he is damn fun to watch so, who cares?)
Effects where off the chart! The digital manipulation of Evans face onto the pre-super soldier body was stunning! It easily made up for the flaws in the Redskull make-up effects. Red is apparently still a tough color to deal with. I kept seeing that annoying line where his face stopped and the wall behind him began.
The plot was a simple one and that was smart. Make it too convoluted and it would have only waited down everything else. This was evil trying to take over the world and good trying to stop it. Nothing more, nothing less. (Note to Hollywood, this is really all a super-hero movie needs) While movies like the
X-Men First Class,
Green Lantern and
Thor all try to weave their stories into the real world, and as an ironic result always seem to be just outside of it,
Captain America acknowledges the imaginative world from which it originated. It creates a sort of alternate reality where the Captain America comics and movies all stem from the real life exploits of one Steve Rogers.
Captain America was not a typical super-hero origin story. This was not a story about a man who is given a chance to be a hero, it was a story about a hero who is given the chance to be a man.
Easily an 8, maybe a low 9, out of 10.
