While this didn't knock my socks off, the fact that I've just got back from the cinema and want to write about it says something.
And that something is that it's a pretty good origin story without any real weaknesses. Where it does deviate from comic canon, it actually improves on the original. Sidekick Bucky Barnes is now Steve Rogers' boyhood friend and protector and who gets all the girls. Peggy Carter has transformed into a British agent. Howard Stark (Iron Man's dad) is a major player in the story. There's little attempt to hide Cap's real name and he rarely wears a mask. A lot of the time his costume is covered up with army gear. After his initial transformation, the government uses Cap as a moral booster presenting song and dance shows to sell bonds, at least until he does a show in front of soldiers just from the front and receives a lot of abuse.
All the cast are good with Chris Evans very acceptable as Rogers/Cap. The action sequences are well done with Cap's exploits never seeming beyond the bounds of plausibility, though they are. Occasionally the pacing flags but that's worst I can say and it isn't a significant weakness.
I'm going to spoil the ending a little but it isn't really a spoiler as it's foreshadowed in the opening scene. The ending is a low budget version of Cap's modern day awakening in The Ultimates which is fine but a little too brief. I didn't bother sitting through the credits to see if there was a extra scene.
Overall, a sound solid super-hero movie.
Afterword.
Would somebody stop letting the intensely irritating Stan Lee do cameos in these films. It's particularly galling in this one as Captain America was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby and Marvel have just won a case against the estate of Jack Kirby stopping them from profiting from all the comics he created for Timely-later-Marvel as work for hire.
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