Welcome to 2 Kinds of Movies. Gentle reader, as you know, there are two kinds of movies, those that suck, and those that don't. I am the other reviewer, aka, the one that isn't Caius. My name is Ángel, and if you don't know how to create accent marks, you can refer to me as Angel. Now that we've got done with the pleasantries, here is a review of Captain America, and despite the entire premise, the Nazis aren't actually the main bad guys (sort of).
Captain America
I will admit that I thought this movie was going to be mediocre, and it surpassed my actual expectations.
The film is about Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) who after being continually rejected for enlistment in World War II, becomes a part of a group which is being prepared for an experiment to create super soldiers. Rogers is eventually chosen to be the first candidate, because he is not only brave, but also has the humbleness which Dr. Erskine wants (since you don't want your super soldiers running amock). Erskine is a defector from Germany and the super soldier serum had been tried once before, in its earlier phase, on a Nazi officer named Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving). All the while that this is happening, Schmidt and his HYDRA organization have gathered an ancient artifact and weaponized the energy in it, and are preparing a coup against not only Germany, but have plans to use their superior weaponry to conquer the world. A HYDRA agent kills Erskine and destroys the super soldier serum, but not before Rogers is injected with it and becomes Captain America.
Despite being a super soldier, which by the name implies a type of superior soldier, the army plays up Captain America as a pop culture icon, and Rogers goes on tour selling war bonds. He abandons this while in Italy, when he finds out his best friend Bucky was captured as a POW. Rogers, his love interest, Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) and Howard Stark (Tony Stark's father) stage a rescue operation. Captain America, Bucky and others form a team to strike all of the HYDRA bases.
Without spoiling anything, it works a lot better than I can describe. Just reading my summary above, the movie sounds like it would be on par with something like Daredevil, but then again, the entire superhero thing always sounds a bit silly when you read it out (Batman, he's a guy who dresses in a Bat costume and fights crime, like a guy dressed as a clown, and a Matthew Lesko-wannabe and a cat burglar, who dresses like a cat! Get it?).
Despite the story being a rather generic one, it actually plays well in the movie. The film also ends very well, with the movie ending as a Captain America movie actually should, down to several important details. As much as I thought I would despise the romance between Rogers and Carter, I actually didn't, and in the movie, it is done well. The flaws of this film actually come from the genre itself, this is somewhere between the 37th and 40th film based on a comic book to be released in the last 10 years (depending on how specific you want to get and call a film based on a comic book). That itself means this film, while being a pretty good film within the genre, is absolutely nothing you haven't seen before. Even within the genre, most comic book, as well as movie fans, would admit the genre produces a large amount of mediocre or outright terrible movies, and a small select group of good ones, so Captain America being one of the best films of its genre does not mean that it is actually a great film. I however, judge films based on the genre as well as what it aims to accomplish.
This film aims to be a good comic book movie and to tell the story of Captain America and to some degree lay the blocks in-place for the Avengers movie. It does this, and does it well, Chris Evans is a legitimately good Captain America. The Markus/McFeely script is also very good and it is delivered well by the cast, because anytime you have Tommy Lee Jones (Playing himself, like in most movies he is in now) and Hugo Weaving in the same film, the film will at least have better-than-average acting. The sets are also quite good, and very much bring across the 1940s feel. As mentioned earlier, all of this comes together to make the ending of the film work very well, without Evans and Atwell actually have legitimate acting talent and the cinematography being so good, the ending wouldn't have worked.
I can honestly say this is easily in the upper tier of the comic book genre; with everything coming together well, I say it is on par with the first or second Spiderman movie and give this film
3 out of 4 stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment