That's the first thing you see when you press play on Captain America. No, this isn't the 2011 version of the film featuring Chris Evans, nor is this the TV movie created in 1979 featuring Reb Brown. This is the one created in 1990, but not actually released until 1992, and even then only straight to VHS with the occasional showing on cable television.
There are a lot of issues with this particular version of Captain America's origins, and while they all make this a unique telling of the Captain's story, it isn't likely to be something most fans of the character will want to watch. Among those differences include the fact that the Red Skull (Scott Paulin, The Right Stuff and most recently Castle, as Kate's father) is from Italy instead of Germany, a minor difference sure, but an odd one. Another is the fact that the Captain (Matt Salinger) doesn't ever become the heroic figure during WWII that he is supposed to be. Instead, he pretty much fails his first real mission and almost immediately finds himself frozen for several decades.
The film starts off with a young Italian boy being taken from his home and forced into a test program designed to make Dr. Maria Vaselli's (Carla Cassola) human-enhancing process turn the young boy into the first of an army of super soldiers. Disgusted by the military's decision to use a boy for the experiment, she escapes in the cover of night and defects to the USA.
Several years later, she is ready to go again, and this time, the US military has found a volunteer in Steve Rogers (Salinger) who goes through the process and becomes Captain America. In order to keep his identity safe, only the colonel in charge of the project and Vaselli know his true identity. To everyone else, he is just Captain America. When the operation ends though, a secret Nazi spy ends up killing Vaselli, so what should have been the start of a massive army of super soldiers for the US, ends up being just one man.
The Captain's first mission takes him into the Red Skull's territory where he must stop a rocket from blowing up the White House. The Captain doesn't fare so well in the fight though and is strapped to the same rocket as it is launched into the air. Just before it collides with the capitol, Rogers is able to knock it off its course and crash land in an Alaskan glacier, where he is in suspended animation until he is rediscovered in 1993.
What the Captain didn't know is that a boy saw his efforts and those actions inspired him to become President of the United States. In fact, the year the Captain is revived, President Kimball (Ronny Cox, RoboCop, Total Recall) is in his second year in the office and is planning on attending a major summit about the environment. Kimball's childhood friend, Sam (Ned Beatty, Toy Story 3, Rango) learns of the reanimated super hero and goes up to Alaska to meet with him and help ease him into the modern world, not to mention try and get him to help figure out who the Red Skull really is, because Sam is a bit of a conspiracy buff and he believes the crime family Skull has placed himself at the top of is after the President.
What results from all of this is a plot that doesn't have a whole lot of direction and while Captain America does, of course, make his way into a fight with the Red Skull, the overall feel of the climactic battle is less than stellar. Much like the rest of the movie, it is very anti-climactic.
The only special feature included on the DVD is the film's trailer. The video quality isn't the worst I've seen, but it's a far cry from clean. Given the movie's opening disclaimer, I am pretty sure we won't be seeing a Blu-ray version of this film since the less-than-perfect quality of the film will only look worse in high definition. In the end, I would only recommend this as a rental to the most diehard Captain America fans, and only those that understand that this is nothing like the latest film.
