It's a fatally flawed movie that's just another production that HAD to happen so Avengers could make sense

Rating: Null/10 (23 August 2011)

Gonna let you know right off the bat, there are some spoilers near the end of the review. I can't fully justify my grade without railing in to some obvious deficiencies in the handling of some plot points. Don't worry, there will be big SPOILER tags to let you know what to skip.
There's nothing in the movie that you didn't already see in the trailer. Steve Rogers was some little twerp nobody wants, but he just keeps enlisting and even starts faking info to attempt time and time again. His big heart finally gets him his big shot and he's transformed through movie magic (and a strict weight-lifting regime) in to Captain America! He develops an unhealthy, instant grudge against Red Skull and puts his crack team of normals together to stop that bad man. This is all sounding a little.. familiar. Audie Murphy was 5'5″, 110 pounds and enlisted in 1942 at age 17 with a fake birth certificate. During his 27 months of fighting in Europe, one of his good friends was killed and he proceeded to wipe out the machine gun crew responsible and then use their gear to wipe out some more enemy positions. He wasn't done yet. On January 26th, 1945, he fought off advancing German troops for an hour using, among other things, a .50 cal machine gun atop a burning tank destroy. He was shot in the leg, but still kept going. Add to that he had been shot once before, wounded with mortar shrapnel another time, and had malaria throughout his time fighting. But anyway, let's go back to being impressed by super-human Captain America with his super-weapons.
There are little things in Captain American that can put you off the film. Some great actors were cast, including Chris Evans (I cannot explain my strange fondness for him) and Stanley Tucci. In a particularly well written, well acted scene, they talk about heart, the country, and give you a little back-story. This quiet, touching scene is inexplicably overrun with flashbacks exactly illustrating everything Tucci says. He's talking about an operation, flash up a needle! Johann Schmidt, who's that? Let's show you! As if audiences are too stupid to to know what is going on without spoon feeding information in the most clumsy fashion possible. There are numerous other editing gaffs, bad CGI moments, and little oddities that scream "RUSHED" (supposedly was), but I won't belabor the point.
Let's get to the big issue: the Children of Israel. Captain America has just formed a group of crack HYDRA killers, armed to the teeth with futuristic weapons. He has a big heart and always wants to do good. First order of business: overwhelming the poorly trained, underarmed guards at Auschwitz and free the Jews from their nightmarish captivity right? While Quentin Tarantino's alternate WWII storyline involves brutal execution of Nazis with Hitler as the end goal, this alternate reality skips over the horrors of the Nazi regime and treatment of the Jewish people, and goes straight for the wallet with big explosions, futuristic weapons, and an anticlimactic fight that that literally nose-dives to the end. You can argue that they needed to destroy the arms depots because the entire world was at stake, but I don't think they learned that until a bit later, giving them enough time for the needs of a few (or 6 million plus, as it were).
SPOILERS LIE AHEAD - skip to the next set of CAPS to miss this.
What made me love the movie for an instant before hating it again was the romance aspect. I know, cheese. However, one of the best developed story lines in the movie involved Peggy Carter and Cap'n America's love affair, if it could be called that. The simple innocence that culminated not in a sweaty sex pile, but in that one long awaited kiss, really instilled a purity to Steve Roger's character. The film opens with military finding The Shield frozen inside a huge structure. As it becomes apparent that the structure is the aircraft Rogers is piloting to his doom, you wonder "Will he make it? Was he even inside? They only showed his shield. I hope he makes his date." Big Spoiler – he doesn't. And he doesn't even seem to care. We get a quick "Oh, I had a date." line and then that's it. Everybody he ever knew is dead, including his one true love. That's too difficult for an audience to get (see: spoon feeding), so let's just skip over.
END OF SPOILERS – continue here.
Immediately after seeing the movie, I could have given it an A or B+, but after some careful thought and writing this long review, I really can't. It's a fatally flawed movie that's just another production that HAD to happen so Avengers could make sense. Things that do not make sense: slapping that quick-cut trailer at the end of the movie. I'm all for unconventional, but that's just silly.