Film Diary 2011: Captain America - The First Avenger (From The Argus)

Film Diary 2011: Captain America - The First Avenger

1:43pm Monday 8th August 2011 in Blogs By Owain Paciuszko - Seat 13

Since Iron Man in 2008 Marvel have steady been snowballing a steady stream of anticipation from fanboys eagerly waiting the assembly of The Avengers. Whilst, to me, The Avengers will always be Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg, this comic book crew is comprised of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Cat, whilst being shepherded by Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury. Indeed, it was Fury's surprise cameo at the end of Iron Man that first got geeks into a lather, and then in the same year Tony Stark (aka Robert Downey Jr) popped up after the credits of The Incredible Hulk to continue to 'get the band together'. Since then, we've had Fury and Black Cat (Scarlet Johansson) play prominent roles in Iron Man 2, Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) appear for a lacklustre cameo in Thor and then Fury once more showing up at the end to serve as further tease the devout with Joss Whedon's impending superhero supergroup.

This film, Captain America, is the last solo outing for any of The Avengers prior to that film's release next year, and that is also this film's biggest problem.

Now, this may get a little close to potential spoiler territory, but the film basically 'spoils' itself from the first scene which (look away now if you don't want to know anything about the film, in which case, why are you even reading this?!) is set in the present day where a team find a crashed craft out in the arctic and we're given a shot of Captain America's distinctive shield buried under the ice.

Cut back to 1942 and the film starts properly cutting between a skinny idealistic young man, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans with a digitally shrunken body that occasionally works really well), attempting to enlist with the army so he can do his part against the Nazis. Evans does a great job at portraying this good natured, well intentioned weakling without making him too mawkish, he is just a decent and thoughtful individual, someone it's easy to aspire to be like, he's just hindered by his physicality when it comes to standing up to the bullies around him.

Fortunately he bumps into Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) he sees the inner strength of Rogers and helps him enlist, with an eye on him for his 'super soldier' programme.

Meanwhile, we cut back and forth to Dr. Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) who has got his evil mitts on a mystical cube of legendary power, something to do with Norse mythology in a somewhat clunkily handled link to Thor. Schmidt knew Erskine and dabbled with an early draft of the super soldier serum that has unfortunately magnified his evilness and turned him into the diabolical Red Skull, who, in turn, has his own growing branch of Hydra that is beginning to get ideas above and beyond Hitler's.

Back in New York, Rogers is selected for the serum and turns into a muscular athletic wonderkind, but Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) isn't best pleased and, instead of going off to sock it to the Fuhrer, Rogers is used as a propaganda tool by the US Army to boost sales of war bonds in one of the film's most entertaining sections.

Aside from the wobbly and incoherent Red Skull plot the first half of the film works a treat (ignoring the prologue), director Joe Johnston does a fine job - much as he did on the under-rated Rocketeer - in capturing a stylised 40s vibe and thanks to strong interplay specifically between Tucci and Evans there's a lot of warmth to these early scenes, the film, strangely, reminscent of Sam Raimi's Spiderman in that respect.

However, once Rogers finally gets sent over to Europe things go terribly awry, the narrative resorting to a mess of montages rather than clear set-pieces and the villains having little in the way of a plan. And then, here be spoilers, once the film reaches its inevitable conclusion (remember the prologue?) it damages the nature of all that has gone before, why waste our time really introducing us to this world and these people if all that is going to be cast aside in favour of next summer's big blockbuster. Unless the screenwriters had worked this into the very nature of the storytelling it wouldn't have been such an issue, but they don't, passing up a strangely powerful opportunity to continually confront Rogers with loss that could, plausibly and dramatically, lead him towards the sacrifice he makes during the film's finale.

Instead the film is ultimately dramatically wet and there's something a little vacuous about the teaser trailer nature of the post-credits bonus that feels like they might as well have shown us a toy commercial.

It's a shame, because Johnston does a great job at telling an old school adventure tale and he gets good work from his leading man and there are plenty of fine supporting actors sadly side-lined a little, but, that doesn't matter because, as far as the film world goes, they're all long gone and forgotten.

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