It didn't start out to be a Chris Evans thing. I actually started out watching movies with (the uncannily brilliant) Cillian Murphy, and that's how I got to Sunshine. It's the Danny Boyle sci-fi in which the sun is old and tired and mankind is trying to restart it with a nuke to its innards. It underwhelmed me the first time I saw it (not scriptwriter Alex Garland's fault, or the cast's, who are lovely; I think the blame rests entirely with Boyle), but I was fascinated, on returning to it, to find Captain America there in the crew. And not just playing any crew member, but the Shadow-Carrier: the macho flyboy who is determined to save the world even if he has to kill everyone onboard to do it. It interests me that the very quality of earnest guilelessness which he so effortlessly exudes and which makes him uniquely suited to play America's humblest superhero redoubles its strength here, in a role which any other actor would have given an inappropriately black-hatted hue. When crisis strikes, every action this pilot takes is thoughtfully aimed toward seeing the mission accomplished, the sun recharged, and the earth saved. Everyone, himself included, is expendable to reach that end. He's a good guy, a hero, and in the end he gives his life in a particularly difficult and unsung fashion to see it achieved. Somehow, miraculously, Evans never seems villainous, even when he's snarlingly alpha-maling at Murphy's physicist-protag or coldly condemning a shipmate to death by execution. It's a stunningly successful performance in a sadly unsatisfying film.
Evans' career so far is crazily skewed toward the superheroic. Besides the good Captain, he's twice been Johnny Storm, 2009's Push concerns a motley group of mutant-kids with superpowers, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World has its own superhero thing going on. Even when he's not superheroing, he's plain heroing, as in Snowpiercer and the Losers, a movie with roots in the comic book world and dealing with an "A-Team" band of military hero types, sort of flawed (but just barely) demi-psuedo-superheroes. (In this one, Evans gets to be funny, and he really is; like Channing Tatum kind of funny-gorgeous that doesn't somehow seem fair to the rest of mankind.)
Of course, Evans looks like a superhero, probably more than any other actor. He is, in fact, so ridiculously handsome, with a body so exactly sculpted to reflect our modern conception of extreme masculine pulchritude, I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out that he didn't really exist at all, that he is just a complex CGI image created by some genius on a computer at Marvel to populate an annoying lacuna in the casting pool. It's his ingenuousness, though, that makes him the true rara avis, and although his talents are often belittled, the frank ease with which he communicates thought and feeling without drawing extra attention to himself is positively refreshing.
And every now and then he plays a normal human.
Cellular: (2004. dir: David R. Ellis) The worst parts of Cellular, an unabashed action B-film from late director/stuntman Ellis, are all in the first two minutes, when Jessica (Kim Basinger) walks her adorable little boy to the school bus. This is the treacly schmaltz setting up the impossibly edenic life (Jessica is a high school science teacher married to a realtor, yet they live in a house the size of Balmoral Castle, complete with swimming pool and serving staff) which is shattered in the third minute by the intrusion of brutal kidnappers. Basinger is terrible in this segment, but she makes up for it in the following couple of hours, excelling at the "terrified-but-strong" mode which propels her through the rest of the film.
The movie is sprung up from a clever notion: trapped in an attic, she manages to repair a broken phone and call a random number, reaching a self-involved but lovable surf-boy (Evans) whom she convinces to run all over town trying to save her family, the trick being that if the call is cut off, it cannot be repeated and he will never find her. Without perfect casting and decent storytelling, it might easily have been too clever for its own good, but the casting really is that perfect, including William H. Macy as the sad-sack cop who ultimately saves the day.
Evans is the pretty-boy loafing around after his ex-girlfriend (Jessica Biel, a small role, and not her best work) on Santa Monica Pier, and he plays it without a stumble, his charm constant without ever tumbling over the edge into the cloying or obnoxious. Complications follow, one upon another, with an easy sweep, carrying us along over the rough patches without too much turbulence. We believe him as the low-key party-boy who is trying to trick his ex into taking him back by faking a social conscience, and we don't mind it because he's obviously doing it out of genuine regard for her. Then we watch him grow up, discover that he does have a conscience, a strong sense of empathy, and a stubborn willingness to make sacrifices for the good of another, even a stranger, and we believe that, too. In short, the story is contrived, but it's well pulled off, and that's all we care about in the end.
One of my favorite things about it is Jason Statham as the chief heavy. Watching this man fight is an unexpected pleasure. His movements are graceful and clean, and evoke that peaceful, exalted feeling you get when you're watching a great dancer, or any true master of his craft at work.
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