Captain America: The First Avenger

3 1/2 Stars

Everything good about "Captain America: The First Avenger," which certainly is the most stylish comics-derived entertainment of the year, sets director Joe Johnston's film in direct opposition to the attention-span-destroying likes of "Transformers 3."

It's paced and designed for people who won't shrivel up and die if two or three characters take 45 seconds between combat sequences to have a conversation about world domination, or a dame.

This is the fifth film in the interconnected Marvel comics universe, wherein the whole gang -- Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk and Thor, plus their superpowers -- will come together to form a boy band next May in "The Avengers."

So what makes "Captain America" more than just a pro forma origin story?

For one thing the movie takes its mythology seriously without choking on it. Director Johnston knows and loves the story's period; he made "The Rocketeer" (another engaging adventure, more of a cult title than a popular success). Johnston brings to "Captain America" a similar zest for retro detail, in the service of an early 1940s story dealing in Nazis and World War II but also in blue-ray ray guns, and a true-blue, shield-brandishing symbol of the American fighting spirit, informed by the sort of humility that you do not find in anything directed by Michael "Transformers" Bay. It's speculation, of course, but I suspect Bay would explode like the Nazi at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" were he to receive orders to sit still for two hours and watch "Captain America." What's this? A prologue that takes a minute or two to establish a mood of eerie atmosphere? Sound levels suited to inhabitants of this planet, not some other, louder planet? Gaaaaaaaahhh!!!

Marvel introduced the title character in early '41, with legendary cover art depicting a square-jawed American socking Adolf Hitler square in the jaw. Creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby offered a wish-fulfillment fantasy for 98-pound weaklings everywhere. Asthmatic young Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans first in digitally enhanced "puny" mode and then in bulked-up personal trainer mode, comes straight out of Brooklyn and wants to join the fight (this is 1942). His lion-hearted determination in the face of 4-F status buys him a ticket into a secret government program overseen by Stanley Tucci's kindly Dr. Erskine, who pumps the kid from Brooklyn full of the same blue serum being used, nefariously, by Hitler's maddest scientist (Hugo Weaving, shrewd and scary) extracted from the unholy Tesseract of Odin, or something.

Weaving's antagonist morphs into the terror known as Red Skull as Rogers becomes the beefed-up Captain America, leader of a multiethnic commando unit out to save the world and get Rogers home from the war safely so he can make good on his planned date at the Stork Club with agent Carter, played by British actress Hayley Atwell. She looks swell behind a machine gun in her smudge-free lipstick and Andrews Sister hair.

A relaxed air of confidence and, though I hesitate to use the word, charm informs Johnston's film. Tommy Lee Jones could play the role of the tough colonel in his sleep, and once or twice he does seem to have been caught napping just before the cameras rolled, but his line readings (like Tucci's) have a way of tweaking the innate ridiculousness of the material while reminding folks of the fun to be had with such ridiculousness.

I'm not sure Evans was an ideal choice for Rogers. Like Ryan Reynolds, the headliner in an earlier summer title, "The Green Lantern," he's a pretty good actor and the right physical type (not hard to find in Hollywood) but a movie or two shy of really coming into his own as a dominant leading man or action hero. In other words, Evans doesn't yet have what Dominic Cooper has, in spades, in the supporting role of engineer and inventor Howard Stark, father of Tony (the Robert Downey Jr. role in the "Iron Man" sub-franchise). The x-factor is wit. Downey has it; even Chris Hemsworth had it in the title role in "Thor." Still, Evans has a modest ace in the hole, which is his sincerity, and the rest of the movie has wit enough to compensate.

I hope "Captain America" finds an audience, which seems a strange thing to say about a big-budget Marvel spectacular in 3-D. (The 3-D's fine; nothing special, nothing crucial.) Johnston's brand of storytelling and pacing distinguish his efforts from the run of the mill. The action sequences recall everything from Carol Reed's "Night Train to Munich," in scenes involving derring-do in the Alps, to Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent," as in the climactic air battle pitting America Himself against the Red Skull high over the Atlantic. Largely in the artfulness of its period recreations, blending digital effects and design with old-school art direction, "Captain America" doesn't reinvent the genre so much as simply embrace the time and place that gave birth to the ordinary man turned super-soldier, equipped with a shield made of Vibranium. Now there's a name for a fictional alloy! For various reasons, including that Vibranium shield, my 10-year-old son pronounced this one of his "favorite movies, ever."

 

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"Captain America: The First Avenger" Movie Trailer

 

MPAA rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action)

Cast: Chris Evans (Steve Rogers/Capt. America); Tommy Lee Jones (Col. Phillips); Hugo Weaving (Johann Schmidt/Red Skull); Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter); Dominic Cooper (Howard Stark); Sebastian Stan (Bucky); Toby Jones (Arnim Zola); Neal McDonough (Dum Dum Dugan)

Credits: Directed by Joe Johnston; written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely; produced by Kevin Feige. A Paramount Pictures release. Running time: 2:04.

 

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