It was a challenge to bring Captain America into the 21st century because he's so, well, comic book-y - old fashioned comic book-y, not brooding, dark, gothic novel comic book-y. But they've pulled it off here, treating the character and story with respect.
It starts off well and the special effects used to create Chris Evans' "before" persona are remarkable - one of the best examples to date of effects servicing the story. Evans is an amiable actor - he's not allowed to show the humour that makes him different but he works well enough. He's outshone by flashier support roles - Tommy Lee Jones (adding an air of army authenticity), Stanley Tucci (hitting just the right tone short of sending it up), Hugo Weaving (ditto) and Dominic Cooper (lots of fun). Hayley Atwell is pretty in a rather thankless Smurfette role - at least she gets to shoot a gun and run around, which is more than women often get to do in this film.
As it goes on though I found it increasingly loud and uninvolving - crash boom bang followed by crash boom bang, and decreasingly emotionally involving (e.g. the death of his best friend felt like nothing). I will admit that I have this with most of the big tent pole movies these days.
Good ending, though.
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