Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the  sequel to Captain America: The First Avenger. It is the ninth main installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and also the third installment to Phase Two. It is was released on April 4, 2014 in the USA. It was directed by Joseph Russo and Anthony Russo and stars Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Anthony Mackie, Sebastian Stan, Robert Redford, and Samuel L. Jackson as Captain America, the Black Widow, the Falcon, the Winter Soldier, Alexander Pierce, and Nick Fury.

Synopsis
Two years after the Battle of New York, Captain America lives quietly in Washington, D.C., still struggling to adapt to modern society. In hopes of fitting in, Cap becomes an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as a close friend of Black Widow and a new hero, Falcon. But now, Cap must put his own self-aggrandizement aside once again when a shadowy enemy from within the chief offices of S.H.I.E.L.D. (and who Nick Fury initially agrees with) starts creating countless weapons of mass destruction to seemingly protect the world - but really wants to destroy it and rebuild it. Cap and his friends must team up to stop him, but things get more complicated when Steve's former best friend Bucky becomes a villain like no other - the Winter Soldier.

Plot
Two years after the Battle of New York, Steve Rogers continues working under the title of Captain America as an agent of the espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D.. While out on a morning jog in Washington D.C. Rogers frequently passes a man who later introduces himself as Sam Wilson, a veteran US Air Force para rescue trooper who now works in the debriefing section. After the jog, Sam and Steve share and bond over their common experiences in adapting to life after each serving tours in the armed forces. Natasha Romanoff arrives to take Steve with her on a mission to rescue the hostages of the S.H.I.E.L.D. vessel Lemurian Star, which had been taken over by a group of hired pirates led by Georges Batroc. Rogers, Romanoff, and Brock Rumlow, along with other members of the elite S.H.I.E.L.D. branch S.T.R.I.K.E., eliminate the pirates and rescued the hostages. However, mid-mission Rogers discovers that Natasha had gotten her own secret mission from Director Nick Fury to extract the S.H.I.E.L.D intelligence from the ship onto a USB stick. This sparked suspicion from Steve as Natasha's nonattendance nearly jeopardized the mission.

Back at the Triskelion, Steve is angry with Nick Fury for lying to him. Fury, as a sign of trust, takes Rogers to the basement where he introduces Rogers to Project Insight. Project Insight consists of 3 next generation S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarriers that will be launched into the air and connected to Project Insight satellites at 3,000ft in the air to neutralize enemy hostile targets. He tells Steve that S.H.I.E.L.D takes the world as it is, not as they like it to be, but Rogers responds that, "This isn't freedom. This is fear..."

Later, Steve visits the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution and also visits Peggy Carter in a retirement home. It is revealed that Peggy suffers from some form of dementia. He also meets with Sam Wilson again after watching him speaking during the end of a session for veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Meanwhile Fury discovered that the data on the USB is inaccessible. He tells this to Alexander Pierce, who had just concluded a meeting with the World Security Council about the high-jacking of the Lemurian Star. Fury asks Pierce to make a formal request that the Council to delay Project Insight due to Fury's underling suspicions.

Fury leaves the Triskelion and is in-route to meet up with Maria Hill when he is attacked by assassins impersonating policemen. He gets away but then soon stopped by a masked man in the middle of the road that shoots a magnetic bomb under Fury's car, flipping it over. However, before the masked man gets to Fury, he manages to use a hi-tech device to cut through the street and escape into the sewers.

Steve arrives to his apartment and, after talking to his neighbor, becomes suspicious when he hears his stereo's still on. He sneaks in through the window and finds Nick Fury sitting in a chair in the dark. He tells Rogers that his wife kicked him out, while communicating through written text on his phone that his story is misdirection because they are being eavesdropped upon. Fury tells Steve that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised before being shot several times by the masked man standing on the adjacent building. Fury gives the USB to Steve and tells him not to trust anyone, before falling unconscious. Roger's neighbor smashes in the door reveling herself to be Agent 13, who had been posted by Fury to keep an eye on Steve. Steve then pursues the masked man, jumping through the window into the next-door office building. He throws his shield at the masked man on the rooftop, but surprisingly the man is able to catch the shield with his cybernetic arm and throws it back before jumping off of the building and disappearing.

Fury is taken to a hospital in critical condition. His heart stops during surgery, and after the doctors fail to revive him his body is collected by Maria Hill. Rumlow tells Steve he is wanted at the Triskelion for an urgent meeting. Feeling suspicious, Steve quickly hides the USB in a vending machine and leaves. At the Triskelion, he is questioned by Pierce, who says he is one of Nick's oldest friends and wants to know who killed him. Steve doesn't trust Pierce and says nothing about the USB or the circumstances of Fury's death, merely reiterating that Fury said not to trust anyone. He leaves Alexander to go to the hospital. While in the elevator, Steve is joined by several S.T.R.I.K.E. operatives, and soon realizes they are there to kill him. He fights the attackers and successfully knocks them all out, before jumping out the elevator to avoid arrest. After landing, he drives away on his motor-cycle and evades an attacking Quinjet.

Pierce then declares Steve a fugitive to be taken out by S.H.I.E.L.D. for withholding information on Nick Fury's death. It is later revealed that Pierce is working with the masked man when he shoots his cleaner for seeing them talking together in his home.

Steve arrives later at the hospital where he notices that the USB is gone. Natasha appears and reveals that she had taken it and he angrily asks her what she knows about all that has happened. She tells him that the masked man is a spy known as the Winter Soldier and she had encountered him once before. She decides to follow Cap. They go to an Apple store to see if they can access any of the valuable information on the USB. But they, as Fury did, find nothing. However they are able to trace the location where the program on the USB was written. Rumlow and his team arrive and try to find them but fail to do so.

They steal a truck and drive to the location while talking about the past. When they arrive Steve realizes that they are at the old training facility where he trained during World War II. They find a secret storage room full of old computers inside a early S.H.I.E.L.D office. There they find a more modern looking USB slot and they put the USB in. The computers power up and someone starts to talk to them. It is Arnim Zola who tells them that he was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D after WW2 and that he helped to rebuild HYDRA, inside S.H.I.E.L.D. But in the Seventies when he received the news that his body was dieing, S.H.I.E.L.D, still needing his help, transferred his mind into computers. He had been working on an algorithm that HYDRA wanted. He told them that some of the deaths of S.H.I.E.L.D leaders had been due to HYDRA, showing them a picture of Howard Stark, implying that Stark's death might not have been an accident. He was also involved in the Winter Soldier program. But before Rogers and Romanoff can get any more information out of Zola, a S.H.I.E.L.D jet shows up and destroys the bunker. Steve and Natasha are able to survive the explosion and seek refuge with Sam Wilson. Sam tells them that he can offer them assistance as he part of a military project involving advanced personal flight suits.

They went back D.C to capture Agent Jasper Sitwell who is working for HYDRA. Sitwell had just finished a meeting with Senator Stern, a fellow HYDRA conspirator, when Sam Wilson called Sitwell and forced him up on the roof of a tall building. Together with Natasha and Steve they get him to inform them that Zola's algorithm could calculate if a person would be a threat in the future based on their past actions. He also told them that HYDRA are going to use Project Insight as a weapon to eliminate what they view as threats against themselves and the world, mentioning Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange, though this would also mean that millions of innocent people would die.

The gang heads toward the Triskelion, but are attacked by the Winter Soldier and his men. A battle breaks out and as Cap and the Winter Soldier fight his mask is torn off and it is revealed that he is Steve's former comrade and best friend, Bucky Barnes. Cap says Bucky?, but Bucky doesn't recall his own name. The Winter Soldier escapes and Cap, Black Widow and Sam are taken into custody by Rumlow and his men. While in the prison van one of the guards stuns the other guard and reveal herself to be Maria Hill. She then uses a device to cut a hole in the van and escapes with the gang.

Agent Hill takes them to a secret facility where Nick Fury is resting, revealing that he didn't die, even though he was severely injured. He had taken a anti-stress serum, developed by Bruce Banner, that lowered his heartbeat to only one beat per minute so that he would appear dead. Hill and Fury tell them that Project Insight is only hours away and that they had to act quickly. The Helicarriers would reach 3,000 feet, connect to the Insight Satellites, targeting all its targets before firing. The only way to prevent this was to use three special chips that would take away S.H.I.E.L.D's control over the Helicarriers. As Steve had lost his suit earlier he breaks into the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian and steals the costume that was on display.

The Winter Soldier is being prepared for battle but he starts to ask who Bucky is. HYDRA decides he is beginning to remember too much about his past and they brainwash him again. He sees memories showing how HYDRA's Russian division found him in suspended animation after falling off the train. It is then that Doctor Zola amputated his destroyed left arm and replaced it with a cybernetic one. He also remembers how he was put in Cryo-stasis between missions so that he would not age.

The members of the World Security Council arrive at the Triskelion. They are each given badges to wear on their collar that will grant them access to anywhere in the Triskelion. They then meet in Alexander Pierce's office. Captain America and Sam a.k.a The Falcon, break into the Triskelion and take control of the communication systems. Rogers reveals to the staff that there are HYDRA infultrators in S.H.I.E.L.D., led by Alexander Pierce, and that they cannot be allowed to initiate Project Insight. Rumlow and his men enter the control room and threaten to shoot the agent in charge of launching the Helicarriers if he doesn't get the Helicarriers in the air immediately. However, Agent 13 intervenes, beginning a gunfight, but Rumlow still manages to get the Helicariers in the air.

Pierce pulls a gun on Councilman Singh, but Romanoff, disguised as a Councilwoman Hawley, stops him. She then calls for Fury who is a top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D agent, and since two top-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D agents are needed to upload all of SHIELD's secure files to the internet along with all of HYDRA's, they force Pierce to give his retinal scan. Fury states that Pierce probably erased all traces of Fury being the director of S.H.I.E.L.D, but that Fury had made a backup retinal scan using his damaged eye instead of his normal, working eye. However Pierce refuses to be taken in and triggers a button on his device that remotely controls the security badges on the World Security Council member’s collars that instantly kills them by burning a hole in their sternums. Pierce blackmails Romanoff to fly him out of the Triskelion or otherwise he will activate the electronic device on her collar that will kill her. Romanoff quickly activates one of her taser disks, which temporarily disables the bomb device on her collar for a split second, giving fury enough time to shoot Pierce and kill him.

They manage to put the chips, with some hardship, for two of the Helicarriers in the right place, but when Falcon is going for the last one his jet-pack is damaged by the Winter Soldier and he is forced to skydive down to the Triskelion where he gets caught up in a fistfight with Agent Rumlow. Steve is about to put the chip in place before he is confronted by Bucky. They fight and during the fight Cap tries to convince Bucky that he was good once upon a time. As he tries to get the chip in place with only seconds left before Project Insight will initiate he gets shot multiple times by Bucky. He manages though and Agent Hill can take control of the other Helicarriers and shoots down the Project Insight ones. Before Steve passes out he promises Bucky to be with him until the end, a promise Bucky gave Steve decades ago. Then Cap falls into the water beneath and is about to drown when a hand grabs him and drags him out of the water. It is Bucky who then disappears.

One of the Helicarriers veers into the Triskelion severly damaging a portion of it. Falcon jumps out of the 41st floor through the window and is saved by Fury and Romanoff. Rumlow is buried under rubble but is later seen being taken care of by doctors. When Rogers wakes up some time later a lot of new stuff has happened. S.H.I.E.L.D unstable at the moment due to HYDRA. Nick Fury is officially dead and he has destroyed all evidence of being alive, even ditching the eye-patch for sunglasses. If somebody would ask what happened with Fury, he wanted Cap to answer that he was dead. Romanoff appeared in a court hearing at Capital Hill with the high ranking senators to discuss who was responsible for S.H.I.E.L.D's downfall.

Because all of S.H.I.E.L.D's secure files were uploaded to the internet along with Natasha's past, she sets out to find herself a new identity after handing the Cap a file with information on Bucky's experimental origins. And Cap decided to start looking, with the help of The Falcon, for Bucky, so that he can convince him of who he really is.

Sometime later, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker is holding the Chitauri Scepter, stating that there are HYDRA agents worldwide. He then walks over to a pair of cells. He stops in front of them and says, "This is the age of miracles..." One of the cells contains a man who is running around at a tremendous speed. The other one contains a woman who levitates a few blocks, before she causes one to explode.

Meanwhile, Barnes, dressed in civilian clothing, is at the Smithsonian Institution where he finds a whole section of the Captain America display dedicated to him.

Cast

 * Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
 * Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow
 * Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier
 * Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson/Falcon
 * Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
 * Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill
 * Frank Grillo as Brock Rumlow
 * Emily VanCamp as Sharon Carter
 * Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter
 * Robert Redford as Alexander Pierce
 * Georges St-Pierre as Georges Batroc
 * Toby Jones as Arnim Zola
 * Maximiliano Hernández as Jasper Sitwell
 * Garry Shandling as Senator Stern
 * Callan Mulvey as Jack Rollins
 * Chin Han as Councilman Yen
 * Jenny Agutter as Councilwoman Hawley
 * Bernard White as Councilman Singh
 * Alan Dale as as Councilman Rockwell
 * Adetokumboh M'Cormack as Ferdinand Lopez
 * Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Quicksilver
 * Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch
 * Thomas Kretschmann as Baron Wolfgang von Strucker
 * Gary Sinise as Smithsonian's Captain America exhibit narrator.
 * Stan Lee as a Smithsonian Security Guard.
 * Joseph Russo as Doctor
 * Ed Brubaker as Scientist
 * Danny Pudi as S.H.I.E.L.D. Technician
 * D.C. Pierson as Apple store employee
 * Unknown as HYDRA Doctor

Locations

 * Washington, D.C.
 * Triskelion
 * Smithsonian Museum
 * Camp Lehigh, New Jersey
 * New York City, New York
 * Avengers Tower
 * HYDRA Research Facility
 * Afghanistan (mentioned)
 * Pakistan (mentioned)
 * Bogotá, Colombia (mentioned)
 * Mumbai, India (mentioned)

Events

 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Civil War
 * Project Insight

Items

 * Captain America's Uniform
 * Captain America's Shield
 * Vibranium
 * Black Widow's Bite
 * Mouse Hole
 * Winter Soldier's Prosthetic Arm
 * Magnetic Grenade
 * EXO-7 Falcon
 * Chitauri Scepter
 * Tetrodotoxine B (mentioned)

Vehicles

 * Lemurian Star
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier
 * S.H.I.E.L.D. Quinjet
 * Captain America's Motorcycle

Organizations

 * S.H.I.E.L.D.
 * S.T.R.I.K.E.
 * HYDRA
 * Stark Industries
 * CIA
 * FBI
 * United States Armed Forces
 * Strategic Scientific Reserve (mentioned)
 * Howling Commandos (mentioned)
 * KGB (mentioned)

Mentioned

 * Bruce Banner
 * Tony Stark/Iron Man
 * Matthew Ellis
 * Stephen Strange
 * Red Skull
 * Howard Stark
 * Maria Stark
 * Joseph Rogers
 * Sarah Rogers

Music

 * Captain America: The Winter Soldier (soundtrack)
 * Marvin Gaye
 * Harry James

Behind the Scenes
Joe Johnston, who directed Captain America: The First Avenger, has expressed interest in creating a film based on Winter Soldier due to the fact that he likes the character's atmosphere as well as due to his connection with Sebastian Stan.