April 17th in Birmingham, AL: I had been looking forward to this and the timing worked out well during a business trip to "the Ham." Let me start off by saying that you have to suspend reality when watching this film. Not just the super hero or "science" aspect, it's the political aspect. There is no way the United States government could fund all the cool shit that SHIELD has. The income tax rate would be at 75% and all the wealthy alleged "job creators" would feel the squeeze as well. After being frozen for over 50 years and joining the Avengers, Cap is working for SHIELD doing covert ops with Black Widow as a member of the team.
As time goes by Cap seems to think that working for SHIELD isn't what it's cracked up to be and maybe director Fury is not telling him the whole story. Well it turns out Cap's instincts were right, but it's worse than he realizes. Fury narrowly escapes an assassination attempt and tries to enlists Cap's help. Fury is then "liquidated" and while pursuing the assassin, Cap comes face to face with...the mysterious Winter Soldier. Cap goes to meet with Alexander Pierce, Fury's boss, and after the meeting Pierce's goons try to take Cap into custody in an elevator. Despite a 12-1 man advantage, Cap beats everyone up and is now on the run. An outlaw. He links up with Black Widow and the pair dodge SHIELD agents inn DC and make their way to an old Army base in New Jersey.
At the base Cap and Widow find a secret bunker with outdated 70's computer technology and Cap comes face to computerized face/voice with Arnim Zola (Red Skull's weapons designer). Turns out that Pierce had recruited Zola and has been secretly infiltrating SHIELD for decades with HYDRA agents! After barley escaping a drone strike, Cap and Widow make their way back to DC. In DC they go to hide out with Sam Wilson, a guy Cap befriended while jogging. SamWilson, being a veteran and a stand-up guy, isn't about to let Cap and Widow attack SHIELD without his help. Luckily he happens to be an expert at a certain piece of military technology that will no doubt be very helpful in their castle onslaught (funny how that always works out that way for the good guys).
Fast forward a bit and Cap reveals that Pierce is a HYDRA agent and that SHIELD has been compromised (be advised...Fury was only mostly dead which is actually slightly alive). So Cap, Sam, Widow and Fury manage to foil HYDRA's plan by destroying hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tax payer funded machinery over Washington DC (somehow with no collateral damage I'm sure). While this is going down Cap and the Winter Soldier have their final showdown. Cap has a slight advantage in knowing the Winter Soldier's true identity...his old pal "Bucky" Barnes! It turns out that Bucky survived the fall from the train in the first film (remember when Cap rescued him he had been "experimented" on by Zola). Russian troops found him and Zola did some more work on him, he was placed in suspended animation and thawed out as a communist assassin.
There was a lot of things I liked about this film, the HYDRA (although they come off a bit like the League of Shadows) aspect was well done and Redford was a solid villain for starters. Inside this superhero film was a nice little spy thriller. I like they way they worked Agent 13 into the story line. For those who don't know, Agent 13 is Sharon Carter. Agent 13 and Cap were an item back in the day and I seem to remember getting killed in a fight with HYDRA but whatever. There was also the standard easter egg where a secret HYDRA facility has been "experimenting" on Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch. Given, they don't mention them by name but it's been no secret that they were going to make an appearance in this film so they can be tied to the next Avengers installment due out next Summer. They also worked some other names into the film since part of HYDRA's plan with the three heli-carriers were to eliminate potential threats, Bruce Banner and Stephen Strange are mentioned. To say the least Marvel has got their shit together in regards to their characters despite the fact that the properties are spread out over different studios. They seem to have a solid long term plan, unlike DC. If you're into comic book films like I am, this is worth seeing.
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