Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, Sebastian Stan, Tommy Lee Jones, Hugo Weaving, Dominic Cooper Movie Review

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Chris Evans in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

A Weapon of Propaganda

1942 and America has entered World War II, unfortunately for Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) he is too sickly and weedy to sign up, despite trying several times. But that is when he is recruited by Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who through an experiment turns Steve from being a puny human into a mighty man. Unfortunately when Dr. Erskine is assassinated by an agent working for Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), head of Nazi Germany's secret HYDRA research department it leads to Steve being used as just Captain America a propaganda mascot. That is until he ends up getting a chance to prove his worth when he goes on a rescue mission.

Chris Evans' face sitting above his digitally altered weedy body is one of the most unsettling things I have seen in a few years. It just isn't right and makes the opening of "Captain America: The First Avenger" a little hard to watch although trust me when I say it is part of the reason why you won't forget it either.

Hayley Atwell in Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)

Now as to "Captain America: The First Avenger", well as someone who doesn't go crazy for these comic book, super hero movies I have to say that if I was 20 years younger it would be the sort of movie I would have taken my then girlfriend to watch on a weekend and no doubt we would have demolished a large buck of popcorn and equally large cokes whilst watching. And back then I would have probably gone out and bought it when it came out on video, oh yes I am talking of a time before DVD and downloads. But do you know what, as a forty something I wasn't blow away by it enough to want to watch it again, yes it entertained but not like some of these other comic book movies.

The thing is that "Captain America: The First Avenger" ticks every box. Appealing star, lots of special effects, big action sequences, love interest, big charactered bad guy, many familiar actors in supporting roles. I could go on because there is humour, both visual gags and witty lines but for me there is something which I can't put my finger on which is lacking from it to make me want to go out of my way to watch it again. As such whilst it ties in to the whole Avenger Universe nicely with Howard Stark being involved I needed something more.

What this all boils down to is that "Captain America: The First Avenger" is certainly entertaining and I imagine younger audiences who really love comic book movies will enjoy it a lot more than I did. But for me whilst it was an entertaining 2 hours it failed to blow me away.


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