Predictably Stylish Take on CAPTAIN AMERICA

The First Avenger carries a particularly heavy load. Not only does the movie, which opens nationwide Friday, have to establish Captain America as a hero in his own right, the movie also has to tie into the burgeoning Marvel movie universe and set up next summer’s Avengers from the distant time and place of World War II.
It’s impressive that Captain America: The First Avenger manages to check all those items off its to-do list with style and high entertainment value, even though it never quite reaches the top of the comic-book movie hierarchy.
The movie starts off in the present day, with a scene most fans of the character in comic book form will recognize, before flashing back to an extended origin sequence for the character. The film finds a scrawny and sickly young Steve Rogers (played by Chris Evans), who wants to do the right thing and fight for his country in World War II, but his attempts to sign up for military service are constantly rejected. Picked on by bullies, he envies his best pal James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, played by Sebastian Stan, who’s headed off to the European theater to fight the Nazis.
Rogers meets fate when he comes to the attention of Dr. Abraham Erskine, an expat German scientist developing a “super soldier serum” for the U.S. Army. Erskine has rejected all the perfect specimens the military has presented because he wants a moral man, which he finds in Rogers.
On the antagonist side, the move introduces German officer Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), who runs the Nazi’s secret science division known as HYDRA with his mousy scientific partner Arnim Zola (Toby Jones).
Schmidt, who is later takes HYDRA rogue from even the Nazis and is revealed as the Red Skull, is attempt to tap into a mysterious energy source — cleverly connected to the recent Thor movie — that will allow him to power an ultimate weapon in a strike against the United States.