Rating of
2.5/4
"Captain America: The First Avenger" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 12/27/16
A patriotic young man considered too sickly and puny to fight in World War II is transformed into a super soldier by a special serum. The first attempt to bring Captain America to the silver screen was astonishingly bad, so this reinvention had a very low bar to clear. This it manages to do thanks to an above par cast and the requisite computer assisted action sequences; but somehow, this version felt a little too joyless and stodgy to me. Tommy Lee Jones' gruff superior officer raises a couple of smiles, but as a whole there's a real lack of a sense of fun about this film; Hugo Weaving's Red Skull had potential but he didn't feature in the film enough and was little more than a bog standard megalomaniac with a bad complexion, and Chris Evans' po-faced do-gooder is nowhere near as enjoyable to watch as Robert Downey Jr.'s boozy playboy or Hugh Jackman's grizzled, bad-tempered cynic. Captain America is efficient enough a blockbuster but just doesn't have the character or flair that makes for a truly great superhero film.