Captain America: A Review

For the first time this summer I went to a movie and I got not only what I expected, but also more than I expected. Captain America, as a film, hearkened back to the golden age of film in a number of ways, while still being a thoroughly modern piece of cinema.

Steve Rogers is young man that desperately wants to be in the military. He's been 4Fed by five different places he's tried to enlist for high blood pressure, asthma, and a lot of other issues medically. He's skinny, has no muscle tone, etc. What he does have, however, is patriotism and a desire not to see everyone else shoulder the burden of the war without him.

Early on in the film, he's trying to enlist for a sixth time when he meets a very strange doctor, originally from Germany. The doctor talks to him, revealing all about the other failed attempts to enlist. He then asks him the question which the rest of the film could not have come about without, "Do you want to go kill Nazis?" The two talk a bit more, and the doctor asks again, "Do you want to go kill Nazis?". Steve replies that he doesn't even like bullets and that no, he doesn't want to really kill anyone; he just doesn't want to be the only man not fighting the enemy, that he doesn't want all his friends to be alone on the front lines.

The doctor muses on this and then says, "Welcome to the army, soldier." and hands him a file saying that he's medically cleared to enlist. Steve is shown to be easily the wimpiest guy there and has no social skills with women as shown by his interaction with the British female agent on the project, quickly stumbling all over himself after calling her a "dame". However, he displays the other qualities the doctor is looking for: He's intelligent, taking out a pin holding a flagpole up to get a flag for a test rather than trying to climb like everyone else. He reads of a night, instead of getting into trouble. And when a dummy grenade is thrown into the middle of the group, he throws himself on it while the others run for cover.

Humble. Compassionate. Self sacrificing. These were all qualities that the doctor felt was needed for the first of his American super soldiers after being forced to create a Nazi equivalent before fleeing Germany. Unfortunately, Steve is one of a kind due to a Nazi saboteur and ends up doing shows to promote war bonds...at least until he finds out his best friend was captured. Then he mounts a rescue mission with Agent Cotter (our female lead) and Howard Stark, father of Tony Stark that would one day become Iron Man.

He rescues his friend and 400 other men and learns the location of Hydra facilities across Europe. One by one he takes them down, until he loses his best friend capturing his nemesis' second in command. He eventually manages to defeat his enemy, but it's too late, he's in a plane that will destroy most of America's major cities, and so he decides to crash it. Throughout the crash scene, he talks to Agent Cotter, apologizing for missing the dancing they were going to do.

The two shared exactly one on-screen kiss, no more than a peck on the cheek. They flirted chastely, if at all. But this is perhaps the most wonderful depiction of love I've seen in the movies in quite some time. It doesn't take talent to take off your clothes, but it does take talent to convey a true and abiding love without becoming physical...and that is what Captain America and Agent Cotter manage to do in this film.

Hayley Atwell that plays Cotter reacts perfectly to his apparent death. Even years later, she is shown to be mourning him, looking at a picture of the boy he was, not the man he became after the super soldier serum was used. Dominic Cooper, as Howard Stark, also takes the death realistically; combing the wreckage long after finding the most important item to be retrieved, just so he could find his friend.

In the end, Steve Rogers wakes up in a room done up to look like it's from the 40s, but he assumes he's been captured. He had been to the game on the radio. He bursts through a set, and runs out into the middle of Times Square to stand in utter shock. Nick Fury shows up and tells him they were going to try and break it gently to him that he'd been essentially asleep for the past seventy years. When Fury asks him if he's alright, his thoughts are for the woman he had fallen in love with, "No, it's just...I had a date."