Captain America, Heinz Kruger: first impressions

[This may be incoherent because I’ve been up for 18 hours now, but I’m going to be underway with my mom and nieces all day tomorrow, so want to get it out now before I forget stuff. Sorry, no time for pictures here.]

I. The crowd

Local premiere 3-D showing in the next big town over. Ticket was $13.50, which is a sky-high price for around here (normal would be $8-9).Theatre was about half full, and with one exception I was the only person in my demographic there; the vast majority of the audience were between 14 and 22 and I would say a third were Hmong-Americans (interesting to me given the status of race / ethnic relations here. I hope this means that the second generation has assimilated into the middle class), everyone else pretty much white (like most people here, snort). There were maybe five females in the theatre, total. One woman like me and clearly over thirty was sitting alone and I thought about going over to ask if she was there for Armitage and then decided I was too nervous to out myself. Now, this attendance makes sense insofar as this is a pretty high employment part of the country even now and most people here will be working tomorrow and not up for a midnight movie on a weeknight or taking their kids to one, so I would have expected the big crowds, including kids without drivers’ licenses, tomorrow anyway. Two young men came dressed as Captain America, which I thought was cute. So yeah — if the point was partially to get himself in front of another theatre demographic, this certainly qualifies. Almost no protective middle aged women to be found here.

II. The film

I liked this a lot, which surprised me. The last superhero film I saw was Spiderman 2, and under normal circumstances you wouldn’t have succeeded in dragging me to this one. I was expecting something that more closely resembled a video game, and what I got was something that was actually a lot like a comic book. That is: the narrative pacing is like a comic book; the way of telling the story is very story-boardish; the themes in the script are very much like a comic book, with spaces for the interjected comic frame and the interjected serious discussion interspersed with action scenes; and the visuals throughout are a lot like a comic book — Armitage was right that this is an art department that really knew what it was doing. My response to it is that I suspect fans of the comic might really like this film a lot for those reasons (I say suspect because I’ve never read these comics, something that Armitage and I apparently shared until recently). I think what makes it problematic is that the speed is thus off. The film feels like it moves a bit slowly — it neither has the speed of the grandiose summer action blockbuster, nor, because its narrative is so comicbooky in style and pacing, does it achieve a real dramatic depth. This latter issue becomes a sort of problem in the unrequited love scenes between the hero and Agent Carter — you look at it and it achieves all the depth of a comic book frame. So the film feels a bit adolescent without, as I say, ever really achieving the brio of the blockbuster that would make up for it. At the same time, it’s not boring, and I don’t need action scenes played at the pace of videogames to make me happy. On the plus side, it also really avoids melodrama, and what’s interesting about that is that the audience that I was with was clearly struggling with trying to figure out if / when they should laugh. Some moments are clear (boot camp, for example), but there are a lot of places that if they’d have been played either more ironically or melodramatically would have elicited a laugh or a snort. The film sits on an uneasy cusp in that regard.It’s the kind of thing that, if it came on during a lazy afternoon, I’d sit down on the sofa and watch again while I was folding clothes or mending or something — entertaining without being stunning. Anyway, Armitage’s got nothing to be ashamed of here — it’s not a dog, and it seems likely to do well at the box office. This is the kind of part I remarked I wished he would take when he dropped out of Charlie, and I think it would have had the desired effect: he would have been noticed for his association with the project. Now, of course, it doesn’t really matter because of The Hobbit.

Performances: Dominic Cooper and Toby Jones extremely strong, Chris Evans good, Hayley Atwell good but not outstanding in a very stereotypical role. Tommy Lee Jones just what you’d expect, Stanley Tucci okay but not as compelling as I’d have expected. Hugo Weaving strong when he’s using his own face, mediocre when in face mask (and oddly reminiscent of Jim Carrey in The Mask). Will remember Jim Morita and Natalie Dormer, but probably forget everyone else.

III. Mr. Armitage

We were warned this was a small part, and that’s true (in the credits he got 10th billing shared with three other actors, the last cast credit before “and Stanley Tucci” ahead of the production credits), but IMO it was totally worth his time to do it because it was indeed a truly memorable role. (I also think he did all his stunts — I’d have to check again, and he had a driver, but I don’t think the stunt credits included a “Kruger stuntman.” If so, impressive. You can see why they’d ask him to do action again.) There’s one point in it where his character does something really dastardly (I had to laugh because it cites Guy of Gisborne, probably unintentionally) and I heard a woman say out loud, “he’s evil!” and the kid next to me whispered “jerk!” under his breath. Hugo Weaving didn’t get that kind of response from this audience. Unfortunately, Armitage has only about four lines. One is delivered in American accent. Still not a winner, I’m sorry to say, but he didn’t sound English, either (man, Mr. Armitage, you’ve gotta relax that jaw when you’re doing U.S.), and I suppose it can be explained away by the fact that after all he’s supposed to be a German faking a U.S. accent. His German accent was neither the best in the film (Toby Jones — really convincing) nor the worst (Stanley Tucci, unfortunately).

All that said: he got the scene in the film IMO that made the most and best use of the 3-D medium, and the car chase scene is truly exciting to watch — I found myself jerking around in response to the screen. Boy, does he ever work his face in here — the glimpses you catch of it are quick but truly flash memories: terror, anger, determination, evil, etc. Lots to choose from on the negative palette. There are also at least five really great closeups of him (albeit brief, given that most come in the chase scene) that we haven’t seen yet, including one in the glasses for Frenz, so don’t worry that you’ve all seen all the good pieces already in the stills. And he really does get his expressed ambivalence as a Nazi across in the scene where he’s about to blow up the lab. Impressive how he can pack that so clearly into about five seconds. it’s going to be fun to cap this DVD for microexpressions, especially regarding his unbelievably effective employment of his jaw (and for costume commentary — that suit just fits so nicely, though you don’t squee when you see him) when it comes out. Finally, as he referred to himself, he does have a truly fantastic death. You will remember it.

IV. Miscellaneous

Does anyone who’s seen it think that the mysterious woman pictured next to Mr. Armitage in New York on Wednesday night was the actress from the penultamite scene of the film?

Nighty night. Talk to you tomorrow evening, I guess.

~ by Servetus on July 22, 2011.