Captain America was pretty much as I remembered. You’ve got two solid first acts and a muddled, tedious third act. The writing and acting is strong throughout, with convincing peformances by Evans and Atwell, and nice supporting turns by Tommy Lee Jones, Toby Jones, and especially Stanley Tucci. The movie, gratefully, takes time to get to know Steve, and the scenes of him standing up to bullies, enlisting (again and again), and sacrificing himself go a long way toward making him a sympathetic hero. This isn’t a movie that tells you who Steve is; it’s a movie that shows you, and that makes a big difference.
The best scenes in the film are between Steve and Bucky, Steve and Peggy, Steve and Erskine, etc. I even like musical montage because it serves a narrative purpose — highlighting Steve losing sight of his goal and falling a little in love with his own celebrity. It makes the subsequent conversations with Peggy and the colonel all the more awkward and revealing.
As soon as Steve goes behind enemy lines, however, the movie stagnates. The movie focuses on action, much of which doesn’t drive the movie forward, and forgets that Steve the man is a lot more interesting than Cap the hero. There’s nothing wrong with action per se — the Brooklyn chase sequence is one of the movie’s highlights — but I need a little something more than Cap and his merry band busting up Hydra bases for 20 minutes. The film manages to ready itself at the very end, however, with a moving, bittersweet radio conversation between Steve and Peggy. And then of course there’s the coda, which has arguably the best final line of any movie in the MCU.
Overall, a decent movie. When it stays with Steve’s journey, it’s good. When it cuts to Hydra, it’s not-so-good. Probably somewhere between a 6 and 7, closer to a 6.
Final score: 6/10
