Skynny Steve Rogers is transformed into the patriotic super hero Captain America and battles his evil nazi counterpart, the Red Skull, during the Second World War.
This is an hard film to watch, it’s so American! Nothing against it of course, every movie should be free to express itself but in these modern times we see patriotic super heroes in a very different light.
I actually think that they used the right amount of flag waving in this one. If they did it less it wouldn’t have been true, it wouldn’t have been Captain America, an hero famous because in the cover of his first comic he punched Hitler in the face.
If you can manage to accept him on his face value then Steve Rogers is a nice character, well written and fairly rounded, surrounded by a competent supporting cast. Dominic Cooper’s Howard Stark does a nice Tony Stark redux impression adding levity to the whole plot while the rest of the cast, even serious colonel Philips (an always great Tommy Lee Jones), shares nice zingers.
Hayley Atwell manages a solid turn as the token female / love interest, a thankless role that actually requires a lot of skill to pull it off. Having said that I have don’t like the love story, Maybe I’m really turning into an old grumpy person but I think this movie doesn’t spread a good message. You see when Steve Rogers is a skinny short person no girl wants even to talk to him but when he became a “super soldier” he suddenly has hordes of girls offering themselves to him while the leading lady can stop looking at his pecs. To me this look like a wonderful advert for steroid abuse. “No girl wants you? Grow your muscle with this magic stuff and you’ll get laid with no need to learn to talk”.
To prevent this they only had to show that the girl was interested in Steve before he became a Super Soldier but no, that’s too easy for Hollywood.
The main plot is also idiotic. The main villain (An underutilized Hugo Weaving) can produce incredibly advanced weapons but instead of using them to win the war he continues to produce more of them so that he can conquer the entire world in one attack. It’s like in Risk, the board game with the little tanks, with the player who refuses to attack at all because he never has enough armies.
The action is competent, not too bad but not that good either. The main weakness are again the Nazis, they look like cast off from one of the Castle Wolfenstein videogames, too clunky and overall stupid.
In the end if you can get over all the flag waving is a nice summer blockbuster.
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