Film Review: Captain America (3 stars)

And to think that Quentin Tarantino was accused of rewriting the history of the Second World War. In the latest cinematic tale from the Marvel universe, Adolf Hitler is a minor threat compared with Johann Schmidt, a rogue Nazi officer heading up his own terror group bent on world domination.

The organization even has a catchphrase, carefully chosen to avoid copyReich infringement: “Hail HYDRA!” Hitler must have been Führious.

In one of the film’s first scenes, Schmidt invades an ancient castle in Norway, making off with a mysterious glowing cube and neatly tying together plot elements from Captain America, Thor and even Raiders of the Lost Ark. Hats off to screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely (the Narnia movies) for crafting this jigsaw puzzle, whose pieces also include Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), Iron Man’s dad.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. While Schmidt is busy tearing up northern Europe, 98-pound weakling Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, digitally condensed) is trying to join the U.S. Army. No luck. You must be at least this tall to enlist, he’s told. It doesn’t help his morale that his good friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) is about to ship out.

Rogers catches a break when a kindly German scientist decides he’d make the perfect test subject for a super-serum that will amplify his everything. “Good becomes great,” the scientist tells him. “Bad becomes worse.” (No word on what happens to average.)

The scientist is played by New Yorker Stanley Tucci as part of a free-for-all in non-Germanic casting. Toby Jones of Oxford, England, plays a Nazi physicist, while Australia’s Hugo Weaving gets the juicy role of Schmidt, a.k.a. Red Skull, who once took a dose of a super-serum prototype and now resembles a cross between Nick Cage’s Hellrider and a bowl of raspberry Jell-O.

Adding compliment to injury, Weaving based Red Skull’s voice in part on German filmmaker Werner Herzog, with the result that some of his lines sound like they’ve been lifted from a Herzog documentary. “Great power has always baffled primitive man,” he says Teutonically.

Rogers is super-serumed and vita-rayed from good to great, and immediately puts his powers to the test in a car chase in which he doesn’t have a car. The scene also puts the comic in comic book when the old superhero roulette game of save-the-innocent-kid-or-capture-the-bad-guy gets an unexpected twist.

Director Joe Johnston keeps a firm hand on the tiller and manages to balance the film’s giggles and gravitas. He’s had some flops of late (Hidalgo, The Wolfman), but calls on his period-piece expertise (October Sky, The Rocketeer) to infuse this one with the perfect tone of mid-century gee-whizardry.

Red Skull’s absurdly stretched automobile (complete with serpentine hood ornament), digital countdown timers and closed-circuit TV cameras represent the height of bad-guy technology. Rogers gets a special shield made of “vibranium,” and comes up with so many uses for it, the Swiss Army is probably thinking of marketing a version.

The shield has a patriotic star-and-stripes pattern, but Captain America manages to dial back the flag-waving to an acceptably low flutter. It helps that Evans’ character is mostly referred to as Captain Rogers and not Captain America – at least, he is after he breaks out of a demeaning USO song-and-dance tour and starts engaging in real, Nazi-kicking heroics.

Rogers also gets a multi-national team of commandos, played by Neal McDonough, Kenneth Choi and others. Comic fans may know them as Dum Dum Dugan, Jim Morita, etc., but I found it easier to remember them by their headgear. “Beret, Bolwer; you’re with me. Cap will lay down covering fire. Helmet, keep a lookout.”

Good acting in such minor roles helps anchor the story. Tommy Lee Jones plays a cranky Colonel (when typecasting goes right), while Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter mostly looks nice in snug military garb while undressing Rogers with her eyes. She also gets to fire a gun several times, at good guys and bad guys.

The result is fun and refreshingly retro. It’s nice to see superheroes (as in the recent, 1960s-set X-Men: First Class) battling evil without all that post-9/11 angst. Captain America might be just a touch too long at 125 minutes (one attack montage too many, perhaps) but there’s a lot of ground to cover, not least explaining how a 1940s war hero will re-emerge in the here-and-now to star in next May’s sequel/spinoff, The Avengers. It’s the final piece of the puzzle, deftly handled.