CAPTAIN AMERICA (M)Director: Joe Johnson
Stars: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Stanley Tucci, Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones
Screening: general release
Rating: ***1/2
Gee, our Hugo Weaving gives good baddie.
In Captain America: The First Avenger, the Australian star of The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings plays the bad guy, a Nazi scientist called Schmidt who morphs – by way of an injection of experimental super-strength serum – into the uber-dastardly Red Skull.
A bald fiend with no nose and red skin, Red Skull looks a bit like Voldemort might after a day at the beach with no Factor 30.
Except instead of flowing robes, he wears gleaming SS-issue jackboots and those tight, long, black leather jackets preferred of Gestapo types.
But it’s ace snarler Weaving’s vicked, vicked vay viz zee Chermun akzunt zat truly makes ees oh-so-hissable Red Skull a top-shelf villain – top-shelf as far as the recent glut of cut-and-paste comic book-to-movie superhero transmutations go.
The newest masked crusader to kapow his way onto the big screen from the pages of Marvel Comics, Captain America is actually one of the oldest costumed do-gooders.
The comic version first appeared 70 years ago as the US entered World War II – the cover of the first issue depicting Captain America socking Adolf Hitler on the jaw.
Chris Evans (previously seen as the cocky Human Torch in Marvel’s Fantastic Four films) plays the sickly, weedy nice-guy Steve Rogers, who is transformed from a “90-pound asthmatic” into a super-strength fighting machine.
Good-guy German scientist Stanley Tucci (also in Allo Allo accent mode) and grouchy US Army colonel Tommy Lee Jones strap the skinny but gutsy lab rat Rogers into a tanning-booth type capsule, turn the very big ‘‘VITA-RAY’’ dial up to 100 and shield their eyes from the blinding light.
Out pops Mr Muscles, juiced up on the gene-altering serum and bulging in all the right places.
Then he’s off to fight the Nazis and thwart Red Skull’s plan to out-Hitler Hitler.
With the help of boffin sidekick Toby Jones (another rich Chermun accent), Schmidt/Red Skull has developed vapourising ray guns and bombs using a gleaming cube of something “from the gods” that looks like it could have been a prop on Transformers or Thor.
With his army of black-helmeted henchmen saluting him a daft two-fisted “heil”, Red Skull sets off in his giant bomber towards the US of A with a potentially apocalyptic payload.
Only the bloke with the star-spangled shield can stop him.
Captain America’s retro-futuristic production design works a treat, much like Tim Burton’s original Batman movie.
Without ever dazzling like Iron Man or digging deep into the psyche like The Dark Knight, this film still delivers all the required accoutrements, from squeaking leatherwear to supersized tanks, upsized stealth bombers, blazing tommy guns and flame-throwers.
The action scenes are muscular, as our hero frisbees his shield around thumping Nazis.
An at-times dodgy blend of CGI and body doubles renders Evans a human Pez dispenser (big head, skinny body) before he’s transformed into the super-stud.
The Rogers character is a plain, earnest hero, straight as an arrow and not given to the snazzy quips we saw from Evans in the Fantastic Four flicks. So all the fun stuff here is left to the likes of Weaving, who’s very, very good playing very, very bad.
Jones virtually Tweets in his performance but, what the heck.
At one dramatic point during the climactic battle, Captain A snogs his girlfriend (British lovely Hayley Atwell) and looks to Jones before leaping back into the fray, to which the colonel barks: “I’m not kissing you!”
There are more laughs like this, including a nod to Indiana Jones as Schmidt grabs his alien cube thingy and scoffs “and the Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert”.
The obligatory Stan Lee cameo, Dominic Cooper’s role as Howard Stark (joining the Marvel dots, he’s the father of Iron Man Tony Stark) and Samuel L.Jackson’s arrival at the end tick all the fanboy boxes as Marvel steers us towards next year’s superhero all-in, The Avengers.
While his first outing isn’t a stunner, it’d be nice if Captain America scored some more screen time of his own at some point.
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