Captain America: The First Avenger – review

"Unhappy the land that has no heroes," says someone in Brecht's Life of Galileo , to which Galileo replies: "No. Unhappy the land that needs heroes!" Make that superheroes and I'd say: "Hear, hear." Hollywood, working with Marvel Comics, is currently giving us a surfeit of these caped crusaders with camp costumes and special powers, the latest being the deadly dull Captain America, originally created as a comic book figure in 1941. He's a 90lb weakling turned into a powerful democratic protagonist by a German emigre scientist (Stanley Tucci) as the US enters the second world war. He has an opposite number in Hitler's Nazi superhero, Red Skull, a Teutonic villain with a strong physical resemblance to Harry Potter's nemesis, Voldemort. There are borrowings from the superior Raiders of the Lost Ark (for which Captain America's director won a visual effects Oscar) and it's altogether inferior to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds . It ends, depressingly, with a trailer for a sequel due next May.