Film Review | Captain America: The First Avenger

For all its recent financial woes, the US can at least breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to the cinematic adaptation of one of their longest-running superheroes. For a film about Captain America – meek patriot turned supersoldier turned bona-fide superhuman post-1960s – could not (and I repeat, private, could NOT) have been filmed during the George W. Bush era without coming off as yet another iteration of the jingoistic propaganda machine that he inevitably was when he first appeared on the scene in 1941… and as WWII was still underway, the iconic image is that of ‘Cap socking the Fuhrer a good one on the chin.

So it’s just as well that the US is barely hanging on as it spirals into an unprecedented monetary lacuna. It allows us to enjoy Marvel’s rip-roaring tale of period derring-do (and other associated clichés) with no residual bitterness – and while that associated trait, cynicism, is inevitably present in the big budget bonanza, there is very little bitterness and quite a lot of innocent adventure to be had in this origin story.

Chris Evans – a veteran of comic book adaptations, having starred in Marvel’s own The Fantastic Four and its sequel, along with a delicious cameo in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World – is Steve Rogers, who, in the first half of the film is a skinny little twerp with a wish: to serve his country in the good fight against The Great Dictator.

His attempts to enrol the usual way are consistently thwarted, but when the military scientist Dr Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) catches wind of Steve’s situation, he makes the eager boy a wish that can scarcely refuse. Steve agrees to be puffed up with strange chemicals as part of a ‘supersoldier’ experiment by the US military, running with the help of Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper… and that’s Iron Man’s dad, fact fans!)

The experiment is successful but now, the country faces an even more ominous threat at the hands of Johann ‘The Red Skull’ Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), an earlier guinea pig for Dr Erskine and the leader of Nazi splinter group Hydra.

What saves Captain America from becoming a bland, mass produced cog in the Marvel machine – which it very much is: it’s the final piece of the studio’s ‘Avengers’ puzzle – is its polished period glee. Joe Johnston’s film has more in common with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom than The Dark Knight, and it’s refreshing to see a meat-and-potatoes yarn in today’s world of darkness and 3D.

A character called ‘Captain America’ does need some justification however, and the script just about manages to deflate a potentially annoying jingoism with a funny little twist at the beginning. Bar some shoe-horned political correctness when it comes to the female lead, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and an equally clumsy, tacked on transitional sequence at the end (which ties the film to the upcoming superhero crossover, The Avengers), the film is an unbridled joy.

Particularly, it seems, for its senior leads, as Weaving and Tommy Lee Jones (playing the cranky Colonel Chester Phillips) chew enough scenery to grow morbidly obese.