Pretty good

Rating: 7/10 (6 November 2011)

Another quite good comic book movie. Like this summer's Thor and X-Men: First Class, it's far better than it needs to be. Captain America is one of the cornier superheroes, and the film does a good job of playing with that. Chris Evans is good (though I do miss the cleverness he exhibited in Fantastic Four, in which he was about the only good thing) as Steve Rogers, a 90lb weakling (created through some good CGI effects) who undergoes an experiment to make him a superman. Although he immediately exhibits heroics, no one knows what to do with him, so they just use him as a war bond salesman. He feels kind of worthless about it, especially at USO shows where he just ends up as the butt of jokes by weary servicemen who would rather just see the dancers come back on stage. Soon enough, he gets another opportunity to be a hero, and, after that, he becomes a full-fledged soldier with an elite team to fight Hydra, a secret Nazi scientific organization working on super-powered weaponry (Hugo Weaving and Toby Jones are great as the villain Red Skull and his lead scientific mind). The film is quite respectful to the era and WWII (it easily could have come off as insulting), while still being an exciting and fun modern action flick. Hayley Atwell is quite good as Evans' love interest. Also co-starring Tommy Lee Jones and Stanley Tucci.