Been Watching: Captain America - The First Avenger

 Steve Rogers may be undersized and sickly but that doesn't stop him wanting to do his bit. After trying to join the US Army 5 times without success, he makes one more attempt to enlist and this time he catches the eye of scientist Dr Abraham Erskine who agrees to let him join up. He is then offered a chance to participate in a top-secret plan to create a Super Soldier.
 The experiment works but thanks to a Nazi agent popping up at the wrong moment, that success is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
 In their wisdom the State Department turn new hero Captain America into a fundraising tool and it's only when Steve learns that an old friend is in trouble that he finally decides to show what he can really do.
In the meantime Nazi mad science boffin Johann Schmidt has acquired a powerful new energy source and is finding fun ways to play with it.

This is good old-fashioned comic-book fun, complete with two-fisted heroics, gleefully anachronistic tech and a minimum of navel-gazing. There's no attempt at grounding the film in reality or making it "Darker & edgier" and if you dislike the tone of "America-Yay" all I can say is...This is a film made by Americans for an American audience about a guy called Captain America. What did you expect, numbnuts?
Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving play their respective parts pretty much as you'd expect, Hayley Atwell was possibly cast because Kate Beckinsale was busy but does a decent job and Chris Evans is a suitably heroic All-American boy as the lead - and how the hell they managed to pull off him playing sickly Steve Rogers and chiselled Cap is a feat in itself - although I can't help feeling that when The Avengers movie has him sharing screen time with Robert Downey Jr's Tony Stark and Chris Hemming's Thor he's going to fade into the background a bit. He makes a good fist of it but doesn't seem to attain the same charm or depth that the others managed.
 In short, Captain America manages to provide plenty of action without turning into a cheese-fest and sets up the Avengers movie in respectable fashion.