Steve Rogers discovers a conspiracy deep within S.H.I.E.L.D. and doesn't know who to trust. After the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers is living in DC and working for S.H.I.E.L.D.
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When one of their ships is boarded by pirates, S.H.I.E.L.D. sends in a team that includes Captain America and Black Widow, aka Natasha Romanoff. The mission is a success, but Rogers discovers that Natasha was ordered by Nick Fury to retrieve data from the ship without concerning herself for the hostages.
Feeling betrayed by the secretiveness, Rogers confronts Fury, who reveals that S.H.I.E.L.D. is working on a global tracking and defense program called Project Insight. It involves three massive helicarriers capable of monitoring all communications and preemptively eliminating targets before they commit crimes. Rogers is appalled by this and tells Fury as much.
Later Fury is attacked in his vehicle by armed assailants led by a mysterious assassin known as the Winter Soldier. Rogers comes home to find an injured Fury hiding in his apartment, Fury warns him to trust no one and gives him a USB with the encrypted information but is shot and killed by the Winter Soldier.
The next day Rogers is summoned by the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D. and questioned about Fury. He reveals nothing, but as he exits the building he is attacked by a group of agents and branded a fugitive when he escapes.
He teams up with Natasha, who has found the USB drive which Rogers had hidden, and they follow the clues to an old military bunker. There they uncover a secret facility and discover that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been infiltrated by HYDRA agents since its founding.
Rogers and Natasha team up with Sam Wilson, a friend of Rogers and the three decide to confront the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D. whom they believe to be an infiltrator. But on the way to do so they are intercepted by a HYDRA squadron led by the Winter Soldier himself. During the firefight the Winter Soldier is unmasked and Rogers recognizes his old friend Bucky Barnes. Barnes flees and the trio is captured by SHIELD/HYDRA.
Agent Maria Hill rescues them and takes them to a secret location where they are shocked to find Nick Fury very much alive. He faked his death in order to escape, and has a plan to take down Project Insight by replacing the controller chips in each of the helicarriers.
The trio head to SHIELD headquarters and broadcast the HYDRA plot over the intercom, causing gun battles between infiltrators and loyal SHIELD agents within the building. Rogers and Wilson head to the helicarriers while Natasha and Fury take on the head of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Best part of story, including ending:
It's a tight political thriller on top of the superheroics, the corruption of SHIELD is pretty scary.
Best scene in story:
When Captain America pretty much single handedly takes back the SHIELD vessel at the start of the movie, it's fun to see super powers that don't involve giant explosions.
Opinion about the main character:
Rogers is sincerely idealistic, without irony, and it works.
Captain America, an WWII hero frozen in time and thawed out in the present, unravels a government conspiracy that threatens millions. Steve Rogers was a weakling with a good heart, transformed during the era of World War Two into Captain America, a super-soldier fighting to preserve the American way. After an accident leads to him being frozen in ice, he is found and thawed out in the present by SHIELD, an American spy group that requires the help of superheroes from time to time. When he is called to help rescue a SHIELD ship from pirates, he discovers fellow agent Natasha Romanov, a.k.a. The Black Widow, deviating from their mission to rescue data from the ship onto a thumb drive for the head of SHIELD, Nick Fury. Upon discovering this, Rogers voices displeasure to Fury, who lets him in on a secret: an operation called Project Insight, which would enable three massive Helicarriers-- carrier ships propelled into the air-- to be controlled remotely, with the power to take out any bad guy whenever need. However, when Fury finds that his files have been tampered with, he delays Project Insight. Upon being attacked in the open, Fury races to Rogers' apartment, where he hands him the thumb drive before being shot to death by an assassin known only as the Winter Soldier. With the help of Black Widow, Rogers discovers the origin point of the flash drive, a secret bunker in his old World War Two training facility. There, they encounter Arnim Zola, a maniacal German scientist working for the evil organization HYDRA who had been uploaded onto a computer and had come up with an algorithm for destroying anyone who could be seen as a threat, present or future, to HYDRA's wishes. Rogers and Romanov, on the run from SHIELD, which has been heavily infiltrated with HYDRA members, are forced to try to infiltrate the three Helicarriers themselves and switch out their controller chips, so that HYDRA can't carry out the greatest simultaneous assassination plot in world history. When Rogers discovers that the Winter Soldier is in fact his old World War Two friend Bucky Barnes, it makes the task even harder, as he refuses to kill his friend.
Best part of story, including ending:
This is an incredible film, one of the best in Marvel Comics cinema history, as it works as both an awesome superhero film and an intense spy thriller.
Best scene in story:
In one scene, Rogers is surrounded on a huge elevator by SHIELD agents, and he is forced to fight them all-- even with one hand magnetically stuck to the wall.
Opinion about the main character:
Rogers is perhaps the ideal hero: he's smart, funny, strong, and most importantly, willing to make any sort of self-sacrifice necessary to do the right thing.
