The original American hero.

Rating: 10/10 (24 March 2015)

Growing up, I was never into Captain America, nor did I ever read the comics, so when I sat down to watch this film, I had no clue how it was going to turn out. Was it going to be a great action film or a schlocky mess? Well, I will say that while Captain America didn't blow my mind like Iron Man, Thor or Guardians of the Galaxy did, I still found it to be a very entertaining and engaging movie, from it's 1940's theme to it's great acting and fantastic action scenes.
The film starts off in the frozen Arctic where a Russian oil team discovers something strange buried in the ice. They call up the Americans who slice through the ice and find a large aircraft under the snow and uncover a round read, white, and blue shield with a star upon it. The scene then cuts to a Norwegian village in March of 1942 where Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull seizes a mysterious item known as the Tesseract which boasts limitless power. Meanwhile, over in America, the U.S. army deems draftee Steve Rogers unfit for military service due to innumerable health problems, but Rogers doesn't give up and soon gets picked as a test subject for a "super solider" experiment and is injected with a unique serum. Following the experiment, Rogers emerges feeling taller and more robust but an undercover Hydra agent kills the doctor preforming the experiment and runs, but Steve chases and catches up with the agent but he takes a suicide pill before Rogers can get any information out of him. Now, Rogers dons the outfit of Captian America to order to take down Hydra's operations.
Joe Johnston may not seem like the right man to direct a film like this, but given what he did on The Rocketeer, I can't think of a better director for the job. What he does is rather than make Captain America a dark, heavy superhero film like what Nolan did with Batman, he goes for a more fun call back to films like Riders of the Lost Ark, something the MCU has become so well known for and Captain America: The First Avenger sure doesn't hold back on it. The writing is truly fabulous with a mix of both humor and heart, the romance between Steve and Peggy feels natural, the pace of the movie is great and never once did it feel padded out or boring in any way nor did any of the humor.
As with the other Marvel movies that I've seen so far, the casting is perfect. Chris Evans plays an excellent Captain America, bringing a lot of sincerity and heart to this character and he does it perfectly. During the first half of the film, Johnson slowly builds momentum to allow us time to get to know Rogers as a courageous little guy who suffers from the fury of bullies. This pitiful weakling through never lets anyone knock him down, and it's enjoyable to watch because Evans makes it look so genuine even with the computer effects. It's also very exhilarating to see a hero was isn't spending the whole movie moping around and play a true hero and rather than having Chris play Cap as a parody, the writers and the director take the character seriously and it pays off beautifully. Steve comes across as an incredibly interesting character, proving that the belief that an old-molded hero is lower to his anti-hero counterparts just isn't true. Hugo Weaving always plays a great villain and here, he is fantastic as the dark and menacing Red Skull. Tommy Lee Jones puts out a very convincing performance as Captain America's supervisor and even has a few humorous lines in the film. Haley Atwell is attractive, aggressive and just pain beautiful as Peggy Carter and the chemistry between her and Evens just trickles off the screen and makes for one of the MCU's best romances. Toby Jones is wonderful as a pitying, almost agreeable Arnim Zola. Stanly Tucci plays Dr. Erskine perfectly well and Dominic Cooper does a solid job playing Howard Stark as does Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes. Even Samuel Jackson makes a small cameo at the end of the movie teasing what is to come for the MCU.
The visuals are fantastic and while they may not look realistic or look a bit too much like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, they are still impressive with some great usages of immense lenses help to make the movie look far more realistic then something like Transformers that use a massive amount of CGI.The action in this film is fantastic with a lot of slow-motion shots being used to great effect during the battle scenes with some stand-out action scenes for me being the car chase, Rogers rescuing the prisoners, and the final showdown between Cap and Red Skull. The visual effects look pretty good and really work well when it comes to the action scenes and when it comes to the musical score, Alan Silvesteri kills it once again by giving us one of best superhero scores in recent years and it hits all the right points that it has to.
All and all, I would say Captain America: The First Avenger is definitely a great action thrill ride with a lot of heart thrown in and should be watched by any comic book film fan. Go give it a watch if you haven't already, you'll enjoy it.