This movie gets off to an interesting start – the plot early on is pretty good. The action initially is not bad either. But in the second half, the action becomes little more than white noise. The plot loses track and the whole movie drops off. The very ending is an interesting one, but we went from a great build-up to a load of senseless, uncoordinated action & drama, such that ever since half way through this movie I’ve been mostly looking forward to what’s to come in the sequels because it never looked like any interesting plot developments were likely to happen in this movie.
Chris Evans himself does a decent job acting in this movie, and the CGI effects are quite legendary in how they make his body very small and feeble early on, before he takes the magic serum to become Captain America. He had help from a smaller body double for some scenes, where Evans’ head was placed on his double’s body, but most of it was based purely on footage of Chris Evans which was rendered through CGI to shrink his face & body.
Hayley Atwell is the main female character in this movie. She has a pretty face here, and makes an interesting character.
Samuel L Jackson plays a minor role in an authoritative position – he does a good job as always.
Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from The Matrix, over a decade older now) plays the main antagonist quite well.
There’s a strong military theme in this movie, as it’s mostly staged back in World War II (with the exception of the very start and the very end).
The superhero himself is quite a simple man, pushing American patriotism and military sentiment, and while the early story and early action are pretty good, this is a relatively weak superhero that I struggle to get behind, especially in the aimless back end of the movie. Having said that, when Captain America was first created, and chased after the man who killed the doctor, that was a great set of scenes which showed a flavour of the potential of this character in future movies. So while I’m keen to watch the sequels next after watching this movie, I am left quite disappointed by the level of this movie, especially in the second half, and for this reason I have to rate it just OK, roughly equal to Iron Man 2 which came out the year before and just as dull itself, with an equal amount of good bits, in stark contrast the first Iron Man movie, if you’ll pardon the pun. Did I mention Tony Stark’s father, Howard Stark, had a minor role in this Captain America movie? It’s an interesting crossover between Iron Man and Captain America movies, and sets the scene for many more crossovers to come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). So far, at the time of this movie, we’ve seen Iron Man (2008) kicking off Phase One of the MCU movie series, followed by The Incredible Hulk (2008), then Iron Man 2 (2010), then Thor (2011), then Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and next in the Marvel movie series, to round off Phase One, is The Avengers (2012), then Phase Two kicks off with Iron Man 3 in 2013, followed by Thor 2 (2013) and Captain America 2 in 2014. So feel free to jump ahead and watch Captain America 2 next, or take it slower and watch The Avengers (2012) next where Captain America also plays a major role. You may even wish to back-track a bit, and watch Iron Man (2008) first, to work your way through all MCU movies in order from the start.