My initial suspicions of this film were ultimately proved correct. Let me say that I really wanted and could see “Captain America” as a good movie going experience. My ‘initial’ reasoning came from the fact that Joe Johnston, the director, hasn’t made a decent film since “Jumanji”. I honestly don’t understand how this director keeps getting more work after decent films to failures at the box office. For Johnston’s filmography, click here.
The film deals with a determined, want to be soldier who cannot enlist in the military no matter how many times he tries because he does not qualify (long list of physical setbacks). He is eventually given a chance by a scientist who ends up giving him super soldier powers. At first, I only thought Captain America was mindless but then the entire military seemed to follow suit. Once super soldiered, Captain America goes after a man who tried to sabotage the experiment and ends up saving the day. This is good and all but the military insists that since this super solider was in the newspaper, he should act as more of a symbol for America instead of actually fighting. Yeah, so Captain America goes on a tour around the world with a bunch of lady dancers and pretends to kill Hitler a hundred times. It wasn’t until the film’s love interest actually gives Captain America the idea to actually fight by simply stating, “You were meant for more than this”. You have to understand that Captain America has the mindset of a simple soldier: Take orders and that’s it. There isn’t anything that makes Captain America distinguishable beyond the costume and muscles. It’s only when he happens to question authority that Captain America shines.
The film is underlined with a lot of cheesyness but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t fun at times. When Captain America is in action, it’s pretty great. Killing Nazis is always great in my book. The film's villain, Johann Schmidt, was interesting enough for me to care about the film even though his goals were ridiculous. I should say that Hugo Weaving (plays Johann Schmidt) is a lot of fun to watch even though his lines were run of the mill.
Don’t get me started on Tommy Lee Jones. The character he played could’ve been played by anyone. I honestly don’t think Tommy Lee Jones knew what he was doing on set. It seemed like he was just running through his lines without much regard to re-‘acting’ to other actors’ dialogue.
Chris Evans played Captain America the best he could but what sucks for him is that Captain America, in the film, is written as a real one dimensional character. So, he is not to blame.
The look of the film was pretty neat. It seemed like they really tried to give it an almost Art-Deco-ish feel. The direction of the film was lacking but not as much as the story. There were some pacing problems in that there were some moments of ‘awe’ but this was also met with moments of the unnecessary or the lack of character development. Sure, we know characters’ motivations but we don’t really know the 'why' behind them. You see, when this happens you don’t care as much for the characters. This was the biggest flaw with the film.
To me, this film was made to simply tie the character to “The Avengers”. A bunch of Easter eggs of comic book references outline the film and definitely would please the hardcore fans but there isn’t much else.
"Thor" = "X-Men: First Class" > "Captain America" > "Green Lantern"
Settle your curiosity with just renting this film when it comes out.
Overall Grade: C
No comments:
Post a Comment