Captain America review

Captain America: The First Avenger is Marvel studios' last curtain raiser before The Avengers in 2012. I reviewed the 3D version for
The-void.co.uk, the extra 'D' was not required but the movie was fun, fast moving and light-hearted.

Just as the US trade deficit threatens to recast the country as a global weakling, along comes Captain America. Proud, decisive and muscular, he’s here to kick Nazi butt and set up Marvel Studios for their über-franchise event of next summer, The Avengers.

His own feature is solidly entertaining, unpretentious fun. With its blue-eyed hero, boo-hiss villain and constant pyrotechnics, the Captain succeeds as the slightly squarer, vanilla companion to his Avenger buddy Thor.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is peevish, a word culled from Wuthering Heights to describe the kind of Brooklyn guy who gets beaten up in every alleyway in town and has a list of ailments longer than his arm preventing his enrolment in the WWII US war effort. He’s a decent chap desperate to get enlisted like his friend Bucky (Sebastian Stan) and not just so he can get laid. Luckily for him, his unstoppable Scrappy-doo attitude is spotted and he’s pitched into a top secret program to create the ultimate super soldier.

A word on the special effects here, as it appears CGI is used to create the Clark Kent version of Steve Rogers; with Chris Evans’ face appearing on a wee Jimmy Krankie-like body. Whereas, after he’s popped into an iron lung contraption and pumped full of ‘vita-rays’ to create Captain America – there is no special effect, it looks like good old fashioned gym work from Chris Evans that turned him into Lou Ferigno, in a good way. He does look the part and Hayley Atwell’s yummy English love-interest Peggy can’t resist touching one of those domed pecs of American imperialism.

So Tommy Lee Jones is the grouchy drill instructor who reluctantly accepts Steve as part of his unit and the scientific boffin behind the super soldier tech is Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper) – who we know goes on to father one Tony ‘Iron Man’ Stark.
And what of the villains? Unlike Thor, whose antagonists were all a bit Hamlet for my liking, and Green Lantern, with its amorphous clouds of crap, Captain America has a fantastic bad guy: Johann Schmidt.

Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) is a sadistic Nazi who believes in the occult powers, even more than Hitler. When a source of otherworldly destruction comes into his hands, in the form of a tesseract cube, he sets out his stall for world domination; demanding allegiance not to the Führer but to his own Hydra science division.

Weaving gives great villain. I can’t place his German accent regionally (although he does sound like Werner Herzog) but he has great fun enunciating every vowel and s-l-o-w-i-n-g his delivery down to make his evil points. Visually, when Schmidt is revealed at Red Skull, he’s effective too. Red Skull is Hellboy red, hairless, skeletal and all kitted out in a Nazi fetish gear, like his gas-mask wearing troops.

The action scenes are brisk and well-choreographed as both hero and villain attempt to single-handedly win the war across the battle-fields of Europe. In keeping with this Marvel universe, it’s a resolutely bloodless affair, without the serious tone of Chris Nolan’s Batman series but that’s fine; it is just a different flavour of superhero movie.

Chris Evans does a great job of reinterpreting the square-jawed hero. He’s funny and vulnerable when he needs to be, especially when first trying out those goofy Captain America outfits.

The bottom line on this week’s comic book outing (the fourth of the summer) is that Captain America: First Avenger is fun to watch. Unlike other heroes, he doesn’t have a tortured back-story, nothing nuanced, just some fast-moving rotoscope-looking action in unnecessary 3D. In the end, you will know how the Captain fits into the bigger picture for The Avengers and those of you who have been paying attention will stay to the end of the credits to see….something that (quite rightly) has not been shown to the press. Enjoy.

[Written for The-Void.co.uk]

Iron Man review
Iron Man 2 review

Iron Man 2 (*** three stars)

While Batman skulks around like Hamlet, Iron Man quaffs champagne with supermodels and has a lark. That’s close to how his movie franchise works as well. Once again Robert Downey Jr. stars as the industrialist Tony Stark, who snaps on his super-hi-tech-suit as the titular hero, in this sequel offering more of the same: its fast, funny and virtually angst free.

This time the Marvel character has revealed his identity to the world and is accompanied by a larger cast of heroes/villains and supporting babes in spandex. So, more plot lines. Villainous activity comes in two flavours. Grizzled Rusky, Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) has a family feud with Stark and quite fancies ripping him to pieces with the electrified whip-lashes which give him his alter ego name.

Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is a fellow sharp suited arms dealer, who wants Stark's career. Meanwhile the military, led by Garry Shandling's lemon-sucking senator Stern want access to Stark's weaponry. His curt reply reminds them: ‘I have privatised World Peace!’ On spandex duty is Scarlett Johansson as Natalia, a nubile polyglot who on presenting herself as an intern, prompts Tony to say lasciviously, "I want one." She has a secret herself, which will involve her kicking some buttock in action sequences far tamer than we've already seen in Kick-Ass.

At the centre of all this is Robert Downey Junior, again enjoying himself playing the cheeky rapscallion – in this one he gets a bit darker too, on account of the poison flowing from his artificial heart – and from champagne bottles. It’s a familiar comic book story, remember when Superman went all mean and scowly? Well Tony's darkness isn't dwelled on too much, there is some dodgy dancing and smashing up his billionaire home, then we have to get back to tie up various stories. Against him, Sam Rockwell is well cast and he gets many of the best lines, as well as a little dance bit which compares directly to Tony‘s own grandstanding.

Mickey Rourke basically plays The Wrestler in a Russian accent and whips people. Vanko is fearsome but he doesn’t have that much to do and his purpose is unclear, like he’s a wheeled in video game character.

I haven’t even mentioned Gyneth Paltrow, as Pepper Potts, Tony’s loyal P.A. who gets promoted in this story, both in the boardroom and in his affections. They squabble and she’s a bit more than Alfred the Butler to his Batman as in Iron Man. All in, there’s entertainment here, solid special effects and a decent quota of laughs, thanks to its director Jon Favreau whose background is in comedy.

Think of Tony Stark as MacGyver with an iPad and you’ll have fun.

My review of the first Iron man

[No mention of The Avengers from me admittedly. Comic book fans will know this movie is building up a Marvel universe of characters including Samuel L Jackson’s Nick Fury from both the Iron Man flicks, Thor and Captain America. If the villain is the Incredibly boring Hulk though: I’m not too excited..]

The Incredible Hulk (Thanet Extra, June 20th)

Expectations play a huge part in the summer movie game. Take Indiana Jones. Some people expected a classic, looking to be transported back their childhood, while others just hoped for a throwaway two hours. Either view coloured their verdicts, although to my eyes Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was neither classic nor failure.

For The Incredible Hulk, it was seeking to reboot a character who last had an outing as recently as 2003, in Ang Lee’s underrated Hulk. This time around, the script, co-written by its star Edward Norton, stays more closely to the 1978 TV series. He plays Dr Bruce Banner, who after being self-irradiated with gamma-rays in a military experiment, develops his special super-ego. You know: the green guy, he’s massive, you won’t like him when he’s angry etc. On the run from the military, he escapes to the Brazilian favalas, leaving behind him girlfriend Betty (Liv Tyler), and her ruthless father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross who wants the Hulk formula to make an army of super soldiers.

The General uses an assortment of American troops to hunt down Banner, including a mercenary English snarler called Blonsky; a phoned-in performance from Tim Roth. One of the characters I’ve mentioned also becomes an oversized monster whose trousers are two small for him like Simon Cowell. Unlike the pop guru, both Hulk and his adversary, The Abomination (great name) do not reflect light the way human beings do in front of movie camera-because they are generated on computer. The elephant in the room: despite today’s CGI wizardry, it’s still a tough ask making a humanoid with green skin look real. And they don’t manage it.

Of the plentiful action scenes, most of them feel like episodes in a playstation game, maybe only very young or undiscerning viewers will be able to get over this.
To the film's credit, it moves along at a clip, unlike's Ang Lee's art-house version. Having said that, watching CGI inflatibles scraping is more than a bit dull. Hulk's Marvel friend, Iron Man fared a lot better with his sleek metallic outfit, he was funnier too.

Iron Man (Thanet Extra, Friday May 9th 2008)

We don’t need another hero. All we need is life beyond Ben Affleck as Daredevil. In our murky times, when American Psycho gets to play Batman and villains are more likely to be US government officials than any exotic moustache twirler, we need a leading man who’s a little bit damaged, likely to lead us astray. Step up Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man.

He plays Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist whose company makes missiles that blow-up, democratically, in every corner of the globe. He likes fast cars, fast women and saunters round like a trainee Al Pacino; complete with small pointy beard. Stark’s charmed life hits the buffers when a military convoy he’s presenting weapons to in Afghanistan is ambushed by Taleban-style warriors and his shrapnel ridden body is dragged into a cave network.

Before you can say “Where in the world is Morgan Spurlock?” the evil-doers are forcing him to build a super-missile. Only Tony is not compliant, and being a bit like McGyver meets Bill Gates (what he can build with his bare hands in the middle of the desert is nobody’s business) he instead fashions a robotic-skeleton which turns the wearer (him) into a walking/flying whoop-ass machine. So he fights the evil-doers with his prototype and returns to America to face the machinations of corporate schemer Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) who wants to make sure Stark industries stay in the weapons game, despite Tony’s newly found reservations.

Iron Man gently mocks America’s bombastic militarism and contains just the right amount of self-deprecating humour with Downey Junior at the sardonic heart of things, like when his PA, (Gyneth Paltrow, essentially Alfred the butler in Manolo Blahnik) finds him with dozens of metallic plates being applied to his body: “Let's be honest, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing.” There is plenty of time for moments like this as Iron Man is not weighed down with too much plot or a surfeit of super-villains to introduce. As the Marvel geeks will tell you, it is an origin story, so it takes its time to establish Stark’s motivation for donning the metallic suit and as a bonus you get amusing scenes where the technology blows up in his face (with a nice running gag about his domestic robot too eager to turn the fire extinguisher on him).

As the first instalment of a hoped-for franchise for Marvel, it’s amazing that Iron Man was helmed by Jon Favreau, a comedy actor with only TV episodes on his directing CV. He does a great job. He combines a light touch on the acting scenes with the expected mecha-destruction. The graphics and special effects are very good; Iron Man looks particularly sleek in his retro-futuristic outfit. Jeff Bridges goes up to eleven on the sinister scale (looking like an egg with a beard). Essentially though, this is the Robert Downey Junior show who, unlike Michael Keaton when he was given Batman, relaxes into the role straight-off and makes you think: more episodes please, this is fun.