Critic Reviews

Captain America: The First Avenger is one of the finest movies yet from Marvel Studios, and a big departure in tone and storytelling from most of the films they've made so far. It is a strong indicator that the more willing the studio is to experiment, the more exciting the payoffs can be.

It gives you all that you could ask for when you buy a ticket to a thrill ride.

Johnston and company are aware that introducing a hero means more than showing off his suit and gadgets or building up the universe he will eventually encapsulate. Before any of that, we must care about who he/she is.

The most stylish comics-derived entertainment of the year...It's paced and designed for people who won't shrivel up and die if two or three characters take 45 seconds between combat sequences to have a conversation about world domination, or a dame.

The best kind of comic-book movie. It's stylish and spectacular, yet it's rooted in history and human emotions. It's smart yet it's funny. It's wise yet it kicks ass when it has to. Just like the U.S. of A.

Adding goofy uncertainty to shoulders as wide as the East River makes for a disarming hero in one of the spiffiest WWII action yarns ever to march out of Hollywood.

The movie surges ahead, moving nimbly through a series of action set-pieces that owe more to films like "Where Eagles Dare" and "The Guns of Navarone" than they do to, say, "The Green Hornet."

What really distinguishes Captain from the other superhero movies of 2011 (and quite frankly, the majority of the others released in the last several years) is a romance that feels like an integral - not incidental - component of the plot.

Captain America is exactly what the third week of July needed: a curiously fun, surprisingly imaginative and unashamedly old-fashioned yarn of skulduggery and adventure.

This muscular, red-blooded adventure has a decent heart and the stuff of Saturday afternoon serials running through its veins.