Good but not great...

Rating: 7/10 (28 April 2012)

As with all of these films the effects are first rate, I particularly like the way the character of Steve was made to look really weak and scrawny in the early scenes. All the performances were pretty good; Chris Evans did a decent job as Captain America/Steve Rogers, as did Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter. I really enjoyed Tommy Lee Jones as Colonel Chester Phillips, Stanley Tucci as Dr. Abraham Erskine and Toby Jones as Dr. Arnim Zola. I'm afraid I was a little disappointed by Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull, but I think that had more to do with the character than his performance. Also worthy of note were; Sebastian Stan as James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, Dominic Cooper as Howard Stark (doing a great impression of Howard Hughes by the way), Richard Armitage as Heinz Kruger and last but not least, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury.
Although I did enjoy this film up to a point, I did find the focus on America a little off-putting. Yes I know they did try to make it look a little international by drawing in a team made up from other nations that were also involved in WWII, but that didn't quite cut it for me. The bad guy didn't work either I'm afraid; he didn't offer enough threat and so turned out to be a bit of a damp squib. Now I know this is just another stepping stone towards the 'Avengers' movie, but I expected a lot better.
My Score: 6.7/10
IMDb Score: 6.8/10 (based on 131,716 votes at the time of going to press).
MetaScore: 66/100: (Based on 36 critic reviews provided by Metacritic.com at the time of going to press).
Rotten Tomatoes 'Tomatometer' Score: 79/100 (based on 216 reviews counted at the time of going to press).
Rotten Tomatoes 'Audience' Score: 75/100 (based on 126,843 user ratings counted at the time of going to press).
You can find an expanded version of this review on my blog: Thoughts of a SteelMonster.