Rating in Stars: ** (out of ****)
Cast: Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Sebastian Stan
Director: Joe Johnston
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action)
Running Time: 2:05
Release Date: 07/22/11
The problem that plagues Captain America: The First Avenger is what has plagued many a story of the origin of a superhero: a lack of variation. The film might boast impressive, art-deco production design, a blustery music score that pairs well with the hero behind whom we are supposed to rally, and an intriguing villain whose actor gives a pretty committed performance. But everything else here, including our hero in both modes of unassuming Everyman and nondescript Savior, is bland, from the way the screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely shoves him unceremoniously into a generic external conflict to the way it examines his accommodation to a bigger, more built body and strength by way of an extended montage set to a theme song.
Before he dons the stars-and-stripes-studded costume as Captain America, he’s Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a scrawny kid applying for the United States Army in spite of asthma that disqualifies him. He battles on in his attempt, though, applying in five different states because of a righteous desire to join those who are dying for a cause that he feels is a worthy one. In other words, he’s not unlike every soldier who joins the military with a sense of gumption, but there’s something about him that is admirable. Evans’s performance embraces this sense of patriotic duty through earnestness, but the writing of the character is bland (There’s the word again).
When he puts on the suit (at first, rather fittingly as a commercial for the armed forces), he becomes a dull superhero, too. That happens after he is approached by Erskine (Stanley Tucci), a doctor who has been working for an organization (whose members include Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark, and yes, that surname jumps out at you for a reason) that is developing a serum to create a soldier with heightened abilities and strength in the fight against the Nazis. Col. Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones, whose deadpan is in full swing here) believes that Erskine’s being silly choosing such an underdog, the British agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) is convinced by his attitude, and Steve just wants to save his best friend, “Bucky” Barnes (Sebastian Stan), when his battalion goes missing.
The major threat here is Johann Schmidt, one of the more insane followers of Adolf Hitler’s playbook, who is in search of a mysterious, glowing artifact that will grant omnipotence and power his own weapons with enough force to vaporize all who enter his path. He’s an interesting villain in theory, but the only thing in practice that works is Hugo Weaving’s performance, which is in turn mostly notable for being a perfect impression of Werner Herzog. There is little or no tissue connecting Steve to Schmidt (whose human face is only a façade for a maimed profile that looks like Voldemort but turned all red) until their climactic showdown.
It’s an act of undermining the impact of the sequence, and that then goes for the entire climax, during which we get very little cleverness with regards to choreography (We’ve been here and seen this before) and a lot of to-do in director Joe Johnston’s staging that is of little consequence. The film does gain some surprising mileage from Steve’s budding romance with Peggy before the final scene forces them apart by several decades (Credit must be given to the sorrowful final line), because it’s only in the budding stages. But Captain America: The First Avenger proves only to be the latest familiar origin story–nothing more and maybe a bit less.
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