Captain America: The First Avenger
Hollywood’s latest superhero battles Nazis and supervillains in "a solidly crafted, elegant adventure” story about good guys and bad guys.
Directed by Joe Johnston
(PG-13)
***
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
“Captain America: The First Avenger may be the best superhero movie of the year,” said James Verniere in the Boston Herald. It certainly “hits all the superhero beats”: A scrawny but patriotic kid is transformed by a military experiment into an American supersoldier, catches the eye of a “hot love interest,” and does battle with an arch fiend—in this case, a German mastermind who wants to out-Hitler Hitler. As you’d expect, if you take the story “seriously on any level, it becomes way too troubling,” said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. Just know there are good guys and bad guys, then sit back and enjoy the film’s “brisk, chaste manner” combined with “all the cutting-edge digital effects” available; “the result is oddly satisfying.” The film also “proves the point—seemingly simple but oddly difficult for Hollywood” to grasp: “It’s the script, stupid,” said Dana Stevens in Slate.com. No amount of special effects can save a movie from bad writing, and Captain America succeeds by giving the actors something to work with. It “isn’t a masterpiece, but it’s a solidly crafted, elegant adventure.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Why Turkey's Kurdish insurgents are laying down their arms
Under the Radar The PKK said its aims can now be 'resolved through democratic politics'
-
Book reviews: 'Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves' and 'Notes to John'
Feature The aughts' toxic pop culture and Joan Didion's most private pages
-
The FDA plans to embrace AI agencywide
In the Spotlight Rumors are swirling about a bespoke AI chatbot being developed for the FDA by OpenAI