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Captain America: The First Avenger 3D | 2011 | PG-13 | - 3.6.4

Set during World War II, America needs a hero against the Nazi extremist group Hydra, and the US Army chooses one of their rejects (Chris Evans) to undergo an experimental process that makes him Captain America, a superhero dedicated to defending America's ideals. He's then sent to take out the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and Adolf Hitler. Based on the Marvel comic. Also with Samuel L. Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, Hayley Atwell and Sebastian Stan. Directed by Joe Johnston. [2:05]

SEX/NUDITY 3 - A company clerk pulls a GI behind a file cabinet and kisses him against his will, as a female sergeant walks in and becomes angry; she tells the man he is just like all the other GIs and stalks off. A female sergeant kisses a GI before he goes off to battle while his CO says that he will not kiss him.
 A GI wearing tights and a mask asks audiences to buy war bonds while 50 dancers wearing short, thigh-revealing skirts dance and sing around him at several performances; at one show, several soldiers taunt the actor, calling him "sweetheart" and "Tinkerbelle," and his commanding officer calls him a chorus girl. A man on a stage kisses one of the six women dancing around him; the women wear short-shorts that reveal thighs and legs with high heels. A man removes his shirt to lie on a machine; we see his bare chest, arms and shoulders and we see him again after the treatment, again with bare arms, shoulders and chest. Many men sit in their boxer shorts and we see bare chests and a few bare knees.
 A GI winks at his commanding sergeant and calls her "Your Majesty," saying that he has some "moves" that she will like; she punches him.

VIOLENCE/GORE 6 - This World War II Era film includes many scenes of gunfire, military vehicles shooting cannons, soldiers firing on the enemy, falling bodies, men carried on stretchers, exploding grenades and bombs with smoke and fire; there is little blood.
 A man flicks a cigarette lighter, blowing up a piece of equipment, and then shoots another man in the chest (we see three dots of blood over the heart and he dies).
 A man, with long scars from the ears to the collar bones, points a gun toward the audience and shoots and kills another man after threatening to kill all the grandchildren in town (we see the man's blood drip from an emblem on the murderer's outfit). A castle wall falls in and a block hits a man on the head; we see him lying dead with his eyes open, and a thin trickle of blood at the temple.
 Three GIs break in windows and a major battle ensues with hand-to-hand combat, guns, ray-gun rifles, and ray-gun cannons, grenades, explosions and smoke: one man walks across a broken steel beam to a platform, the beam breaks, another man jumps about 100 feet from one platform to the next, they confront another man, he pulls off a human-skin mask to reveal a bright red skull, he sets a self-destruct bomb and leaves along with everyone else before it explodes to fill the screen with fire and smoke.
 A GI parachutes from an airplane amid puffs of smoke and fire, and on the ground he punches and kicks away storm troopers; he carries a shield that stops bullets and works as a Frisbee-like boomerang, knocking enemies from treetops and he banks it off walls to hit other enemies with it.
 Storm troopers chase a GI on motorcycles, the GI sprays them with fire and pulls them from their bikes with stretched wires; other storm troopers with huge flamethrowers surround the GI, they take him to a dark lair where a man punches him in the face twice and the stomach once, he collapses, but says he can do this all day and we see him with a slightly bloody lip.
 An soldier flies a plane to a huge wing-shaped airship and gets inside the larger ship, he finds bomber planes labeled for US cities, and the planes launch as two men find themselves on top of one bomber in the sky; they fight, one shoots the pilot from the plane, and flies the plane back into the large airship.
 A man gets into a fight with another man in an alley, receiving punches in the face several times, falling, and getting back to his feet (we see a slight bloody nose); another man punches the second man, and kicks him out of the alley. We see drops of blood on a gurney in an interrogation room as an interrogator asks a man questions and says they will kill him no matter what he answers (he remains unharmed).
 Three GIs use a zip line to jump atop a train, they enter train cars, find robot-like soldiers with ray machine guns, and a gunfight breaks out for several minutes; several enemy soldiers fall, disabled, and objects disintegrate to ashes when shot by the high-tech guns. Laser rifles disintegrate objects and humans into large piles of ashes.
 A woman and a man shoot at a man, the woman chases the man into traffic, shoots into the windshield of a taxi he has stolen and she is pushed out of the way before the car can strike her.
 A man runs at super-speed through streets and over cars, catching another man after punching out a window of a submarine that the man stole.
 A soldier clings to the outside of a rail car, loses his grip, and falls into an icy crevasse; he's assumed dead. A large aircraft on a glacier is opened and we see a human encased in ice; we see only some blond hair and a red, white and blue star under a small patch of clear ice.
 A female sergeant punches a smart-mouthed recruit; other GIs push him down into the mud and lower razor wire into his path as he crawls through an obstacle course. A GI winks at his commanding sergeant and calls her "Your Majesty," saying that he has some "moves" that she will like; she punches him.
 A short GI lies in a machine that injects him with a serum, his eyes open wide, he grimaces, screams, and yells that he can finish the experiment; he emerges taller and well muscled.
 A man awakens in a hospital room, demanding to know where he is; he kicks guards aside, breaks through a wall, and runs through a city at super-speed, until unmarked government vehicles surround him.
 A man flies an aircraft into a glacier to divert it from crashing into NYC; we hear only his voice transmission stop as the camera pans to the wreckage on the ice and then cuts to a sea vessel retrieving a blue cube from an ocean.
 We see POWs limping and dirty (we see little blood); one of them had been released from a gurney to which he had been tightly strapped for scientific experimentation. Grainy WWII footage shows GIs marching and a few being carried away on stretchers.
 A man disables a machine that contains a blue cube containing otherworldly energy, electric charges emit from the cube and we hear wailing voices. Two tanks explode from oversized grenades thrown inside them, filling the screen each time with flames. 3D effects fill the film with guns and knives pointed at the viewers, and flames erupting and soldiers jumping into the audience. A skeleton in a sarcophagus is covered with cobwebs and holds a long sword. A man puts a blue cube into a machine and we see long charges of electricity fill a laboratory amidst eerie wailing voices.
 A little boy is thrown into a river and he shouts to a GI, "Go kill him; I can swim!" A doctor asks an army recruit if he wants to kill Germans and the recruit says he does not like it but will do it if needed. A man points out three places to a friend, where he has been beat up.
 A GI jumps onto a grenade to save his platoon and then tosses it away when he finds it is phony.

LANGUAGE 4 - 3 anatomical references, 1 mild scatological term, 17 mild obscenities, name-calling (skinny, fool, stupid, ace, primitive, dame, rat, monkey, punk, jerk, insane, arrogant, ignorant, sweetheart, Tinkerbelle, chorus girl, Your Majesty, Queen Victoria), stereotypical references to women, short men, Germans, Japanese, Frenchmen, soldiers, actors, mad scientists, revenge, good vs. evil, 10 religious exclamations.

SUBSTANCE USE - Two men drink schnapps, soldiers drink mugs of beer in a bar and we see mugs of beer on other tables and bottles of liquor on a back bar, a bartender says soldiers are drinking a lot but we see no drunken behavior, a man sits in the ruins of a bar and drinks with a liquor bottle at his elbow, and a man complains that because of a medical treatment he can no longer become drunk.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - War, guns, mental illness, medical experiments, finding a purpose, determination, patriotism, courage, responsibility, fantasy, heroes, power, death.

MESSAGE - A good person's personality does not change with fame or power.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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