Movie Box Review

There's a certain irony in the fact that, in this summer of Super 8 and its Spielberg rapture, the most successfully Spielbergian movie of the season is Marvel's CAPTAIN AMERICA:  THE FIRST AVENGER.  Its connection to Steven Spielberg is faint but important:  director Joe Johnston served as Art Director on both Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and later directed an episode of TV's Young Indiana Jones; not concidentally, this is something like the Indiana Jones 4 that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull never was, and although it has its limitations, Captain America is a surprisingly entertaining old-fashioned adventure.

One of the most engaging things about Captain America as a movie is that it's as unpretentious as a $150M+ giant superhero extravaganza can be.  The first section of the movie tells the story of Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, CG'd in the way of Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button) a 90-pound weakling but endlessly stout of heart, who longs to join the Army in World War II and fight against Nazis, but is rejected because of his physical frailty.  Steve finally runs into Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci, putting on a great show), a German refugee scientist who has a magic serum--not to mention his gorgeous aide Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell).  Johnston and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeeley take their time with this part of the story, and it pays off; although we know that Steve will turn into, well, Captain America, we get to know him first as a plucky underdog.  Even after the transformation, there's a witty sequence where the new Steve is turned into a pitchman for War Bonds (it's like the comedy version of Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers), complete with a musical production number by Alan Menken--by the time Steve gets to Europe, we're as longing for him to see battle as he is.

The huge action sequences, when they finally arrive, deliver in size and design, but they're kept for the most part on a human scale--like the Indiana Jones movies, they stay just this side of what an actual human being might be able to do.  Evans is less interesting as the full-fledged Captain than he was as the puny version, but he has a few moments where he gets to reveal the scrawny kid within, and the rest of the time he hits the stalwart buttons effectively.  And there are welcome supporting actors to perk things up between battles:  Tommy Lee Jones does his Tommy Lee Jones thing--it's like he invented macho snark--and Toby Jones is a junior evil Nazi.  Atwell, who's been doing very good work under the radar in projects like Woody Allen's little-seen Cassandra's Dream and the TV miniseries Pillars Of the Earth, has a snappy way with dialogue to go with her looks, and the gadget man on Captain America's team is Howard Stark, who would one day father Iron Man (ah, Marvel); he's played by Dominic Cooper, who'll soon be seen to much splashier advantage in The Devil's Double.   

The very clever production design by Rick Heinrichs creates a larger-than-life version of 1940s archetypes without calling too much attention to itself (as opposed, say, to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow's attempt to do the same thing):  tanks, motorcycles and planes that make sense in the World War II context but are convincingly a bit beyond reality.  The photography by Shelly Johnson, unfortunately, is obscured by a terrible 3D conversion that has little effect beyond badly smudging the original image--this is definitely a picture where audiences should try to save the money and find a 2D auditorium.

Where Captain America really falters is in its villain.  Hugo Weaver, who may be out of fantasy role inspiration now that he's done The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Transformers and The Wolfman, seemingly does a deliberate Christoph Waltz imitation as Red Skull; he's your basic raving super-Nazi (he even listens to Wagner), with a little of Belloq in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Voldemort's noselessness.  Red Skull never says or does anything interesting in the picture, and that lowers the stakes of the drama quite a bit; at this point in movie history, if you're going to scare us with a Nazi villain, it takes more than a red digital make-up job to do it.

Despite that central flaw, Captain America is a fun ride.  It's actually disappointing that in their zeal to get the character into next year's all-important Avengers conglomerate (consumer note:  sit through all 10 minutes of credits and you'll be rewarded with the teaser for next year's everyone-but-the-kitchen-sink epic), Marvel was in such a hurry to pull him out of the 1940s.  This retro fantasy could have made a nice variation from their usual formula, but it's seemingly a one-time effort; although we must all believe in the powers of Joss Whedon, he'll have his hands full juggling half a dozen heroes in Avengers, and the Captain's charm may not age well.  That, however, is next year's movie problem.

Saoirse Ronan only appears in the first 50 minutes or so of Joe Wright's film of the Ian McEwan novel ATONEMENT, playing the young Briony Tallis (after that, her character ages into Romola Garai, and then Vanessa Redgrave).  This section, which takes place over the course of a single day in 1935, is the most effective part of the film.   The 13-year old Briony drives the action that will determine the entire story, and Ronan, who had previously appeared in some British TV, captures the mix of pique, profound confusion, half-conscious jealousy, and an intemperate need to form and tell cohesive stories that leads her to unwittingly destroy the lives of those closest to her.  It would have been easy to make Briony a bad seed, spitefully out to hurt people, but--as her adult self comes to realize--the tragedy of her decision is that she talked herself into believing she was telling the truth when accusing the housekeeper's son Robbie (James McAvoy)--also her sister's (Keira Knightley) lover--of a rape he didn't commit.  Ronan was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for the performance, which led to her fine work in the misconceived The Lonely Bones and a very strong smaller role in the little-seen The Way Back.  

In the new Hannah, both Wright and Ronan are tackling the action genre for the first time, but the opening part of Atonement makes that seem like less of a reach than you might think.  Wright, who had previously directed Pride and Prejudice, injects the Atonement opening with great energy--Briony is repeatedly seen running through her manor house at such speed that she could be Jack Bauer racing to disarm a terrorist bomb.  Christopher Hampton's script, jumping back and forth in time through that day, creates a thriller atmosphere as we move closer to what we sense will be the terrible consequences of what began as a lovely day, and Dario Marianelli's brilliant score uses the sound of Briony's typewriter as a tense motif. 

The more cinematically colorful second chapter of Atonement, centering on Robbie's attempt to get out of wartime France and ultimately on the Dunkirk evaculation, suggests that Wright still has some limitations as a director.  Partly it's because this is the section of McEwan's book most cut down for the film; all that's left is the sentimentality (which Wright's subsequent The Soloist proved to be his undoing).  And Wright starts showing off, most notably with a 6 minute single shot that pans and tracks throughout Dunkirk and its beachfront without much cause beyond its own virtuosity.  The film recovers somewhat when back in London for the final sections, but doesn't quite manage its attempt to find a cinematic equivalent for the novel's revelation that what we've been reading is itself a work of metafiction, "Briony's" attempt to atone for her long-ago sin.

Atonement was quite successful for an art-house movie, with a worldwide gross of $130M, which followed $121M for Wright's Pride and Prejudice.  However, the more expensive Soloist could only muster $38M worldwide, which may explain why Wright is tackling an action movie.  As classics-minded filmmakers go, Wright brings unusual punch to his projects--neither of his period films has that Merchant/Ivory museum feel--and while Ronan has been in some uneven films, she has yet to give a bad performance.  Hanna has potential to widen the playing field for both of them.