Don't mention the war

Rating: 4/10 (2 June 2012)

'Captain America: The First Avenger' is sadly disappointing - as a flashy, popcorn action movie it's fine, but otherwise it's quite empty and there's a distinct lack of period atmosphere (especially compared to director Joe Johnston's earlier pulp-era superhero film, 1991's THE ROCKETEER). I suspect the latter is deliberate, as 'Captain America: The First Avenger' actually isn't a WWII movie: although Nazi Germany is referred to a few times at the beginning, Steve Rogers is basically portrayed as a young man desperate to serve his country in A War Overseas. And from about a third of the film onwards, the Third Reich, Hitler, the Axis powers, and the Allies' campaigns on various fronts simply aren't mentioned, and instead the narrative is exclusively about Cap and his band of elite commandos targeting the Hydra organisation. In other words, it's a movie in which covert Special Forces battle against a terrorist network - this is really a film about the War on Terror, with the WWII setting being mere window-dressing.
I suspect that the producers decided to take this current/relevant approach due to the fact that all previous superhero movies set in the Thirties or Forties - THE SHADOW (1994), THE PHANTOM (1995), SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW (2004), the aforementioned ROCKETEER, all the way back to DOC SAVAGE: MAN OF BRONZE (1975) - had undeservedly flopped.
'Captain America: The First Avenger' bucked the trend by being a box office success, but in my opinion all the earlier 1930s-period superhero films that I've listed above, together with the previous, low budget 'Captain America' movie that was released straight-to-video in 1990, are considerably better and more enjoyable than 'The First Avenger'.