Ralph's Movie Reviews: CAPTAIN AMERICA

Monday, August 15, 2011

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Comic book superhero

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Chris Evans: Steve Rogers
Sebastian Stan: Steve’s best friend Bucky Barnes
Tommy Lee Jones: Captain America’s commanding officer Col. Chester Phillips
Hayley Atwell: British Agent Peggy Carter
Stanley Tucci: former German scientist Dr. Abraham Erskine
Hugo Weaving: renegade evil Nazi Johann Schmidt
Toby Jones: his assistant Dr. Arnim Zola

REVIEW
“The best movie I’ve ever seen, ever”.

This comment by a 11-year-old boy attests to the fact that this edition of a comic book superhero hits the mark with the target demographic profile. For the rest of us this tedious World War II action drama overstays its welcome by at least 30 minutes, is too repetitive (the fight scenes go on forever) and has no redeeming values apart from great CGI work.

At the risk of giving away the ending the only thing I’ll say is it’s the wimpiest grand finale of any action movie I’ve ever seen. Totally out of context to the rest of the story and a real cop out given that there are several better endings if they had only given it some thought instead of calling it a day and leaving things hanging like that.

CLASSIFICATION

intense sequences of violence and action.

FOR NITPICKERS ONLY
During World War II the 4-F classification was assigned to registrants having severe physical problems, mental deficiency and/or syphilis. Steve had none of these: his medical conditions were limiting but not disabling so he would have been classified as 1-Y and therefore available for military service when he first applied.

No comments:

Post a Comment

my ratings system

I've always thought that telling too much about a movie or warning someone about a "twist" at the end deprives the person the pleasure of seeing it as it unfolds, so I don’t do it. You may not always agree with my rating of course, but at least it is an unbiased opinion unlike some of the full time professional reviewers who are on the studio’s payroll.

A few movies you won’t see any review from me:

Scary movies: I’m the world’s biggest chicken and just hate getting the crap scared out of me. I can handle an unexpected door slam, that kind of thing, but a movie that keeps you on the edge of your seat…not for me. Sorry.
Movies geared to the young teen and pre-teen crowd with dialog comprising mostly of crude remarks, awful jokes and lots of rude, socially unacceptable body noises. "The Spy that Shagged Me" comes to mind. (I wonder if the kids know what the British verb to shag someone really means? They probably do; I bet you it’s the parents who haven’t a clue).
Sometimes Hollywood gets on a roll and they produce a series of movies that are all very much alike. For example movies about the CIA were very popular and so we had The Bourne Identity and Bad Company and The Sum of All Fears. They all had the same basic theme and it becomes repetitive. I will see some, but not all of them.

FYI this is my rating system:

0 stars = Terrible: so bad it’s not worth talking about; in fact, I’d pay you not to go
= Lousy: I actually got up and walked out before the end it was just that bad (no kidding)
= Not so good: thought about walking out but hung in just in case it got better (but it didn’t)
= A so-so good movie: I enjoyed it somewhat but wasn’t all that crazy about it
= A really good movie: I recommend seeing it
= An excellent movie you just got to see! I suggest you put it on your "To Do List" it’s that good.

some favourite websites

For those into it, Nitpickers at

has more movie mistakes than you could ever imagine. My contributions can be seen if you check out the Nitpickers Registry and click on the link Nitpickers Listed by Nitpicker Number, select the group 45,401 - 45,500 and drill down to number 45411. Although I have 56 nitpicks to my credit, some have almost 2,000. You wonder sometimes where they find the time to do it.