Australia's Best Movie Magazine

Film reviews

Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

search the site

Enter search term:

newsletter

Enter your email address below to receive the weekly Filmink newsletter

Enter search term:

Captain America: The First Avenger (Film)

by Erin Free | July 25, 2011 16:59 | Edited July 25, 2011 17:00

Registering as another hit for Marvel, this latest superhero flick is big fun, perfectly balancing the action and characterisation, and smartly reeling in the patriotism.

Notch up another one for Marvel Studios. After the cogently constructed popcorn delights of the Iron Man films, The Incredible Hulk and Thor, they've now hit the nail directly on the head with Captain America: The First Avenger, a smashing big screen take on the comic book publishing house's most noble, inherently decent and heroic character. In today's heated and highly complicated political climate, even the thought of an American superhero literally draped in the stars and stripes will be enough to have many people running at an accelerated pace in the opposite direction. The masterstroke here though - and the greatest gift thrown up by the comic book itself - is that Captain America is a hero of WW2, which obviously ran its horrific course in an era when the fight was more black-and-white, and the cause decidedly more straightforward.

 

Ripped from the moorings of modernity, Captain America: The First Avenger heads into rollicking, Raiders Of The Lost Ark-style wartime adventure, which is perfectly handled by surprise choice director, Joe Johnston, whose admittedly low wattage history with this kind of material (The Rocketeer, Hidalgo) has served him in extremely good stead here.

 

Captain America: The First Avenger recounts the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a short, skinny, sickly young man with a heart the size of Texas. Desperate to fight the Nazis because of his innate hatred of bullies, Rogers is constantly knocked back because of his less-than-impressive physicality. With the military's covert "super soldier programme", however, Rogers finally gets his chance. Reborn as the super-strong, super-fast Captain America after being injected with a life-changing serum, Rogers is initially used as a propaganda tool, but the spoiling-for-a-fight Captain America soon goes up against the evil forces of Hydra - the Nazis' "deep science" division - fronted by the villainous Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), who sees himself as more god than man. Assisting Captain America on his adventures are his loyal friend, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and US military brass Col. Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).

 

From top-to-bottom, Captain America: The First Avenger works like a dream. Joe Johnston hits just the right tone, finding the heart of this often misunderstood character, and tempering proceedings with the perfect blend of humour, action and characterisation. Chris Evans is terrific as Steve Rogers, reining in his usual cocksure bravado in favour of an earnest, everyman sweetness, while the ingenious special effects used to turn him into the small, skinny Steve Rogers are seamlessly extraordinary. Evans shares a warm, heartfelt chemistry with the charming Hayley Atwell, whose tough-but-tender Peggy Carter importantly takes a shine to Steve Rogers before he is turned into the perfect physical specimen. Tommy Lee Jones' gruff comic timing is a great fit for Chester Phillips, and Hugo Weaving (voice-mimicking German director Werner Herzog?) makes for an entertainingly malevolent bad guy.

 

The innate and overt patriotism of Captain America is sensibly reeled in (Steve Rogers is no killer, and he's certainly no military martinet), and though those looking extremely closely could probably detect the presence of subtext relating to the US' current battles with The Middle East (a crazed military leader looked on as a god; blindly devoted soldiers preparing to literally fly bombs into New York and Chicago), Captain America: The First Avenger rides on a sense of innocence and positivity that instantly frees it from such speculation. It's big, fun and highly entertaining, but it never loses sight of the rich strain of humanity that resonates at the story's very core. And as another stride in Marvel's continuing march towards the volcanically anticipated superhero team-up movie, The Avengers - which will feature Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hawkeye and The Hulk, and is set for release in 2012 - it encouragingly signposts what will certainly be the biggest comic book movie of all time.