Contrived Battle between Marvel Superheroes

Rating: 2/10 (18 May 2017)

I saw the First Avenger but not Winter Solider before seeing this film. From what I understand, Bucky was Captain America's ally during WWII before being captured, brainwashed, and then transformed into the Winter Solider by the Russians. Even though Bucky causes so much mischief in this film (and I'm assuming the previous one as well), Captain America still places his greatest loyalty in him above everyone else and I mean EVERYONE ELSE. Granted, the mental conditioning that the Russians subjected Bucky to compromised his ability to think for himself, but that should have been more the reason not to trust the man. I don't care how good of a friend he would have been to me all those years ago. If I was Captain America, I wouldn't be the one protecting him; I would have been the one turning him in!
The plot is centered on the villain's elaborate, nonsensical plan that would never have realistically worked by any stretch of the imagination. It involves framing Bucky, make-believing the villain's master plan was to topple the principle governments of the world, and sending the Avengers on a wild goose chase. All for what?: to simply show Tony Stark security footage revealing that it was Bucky who killed his parents while under the influence of Russian mind control. The villain could have simply mailed the tape to Tony Stark with the message "Watch This." (I did not need CinemaSins to point that out for me.) That would have been enough to drive the wedge between Iron Man and Captain America.
The only reason I give this movie a 2 instead of a 1 is because it does have some fairly intense fight scenes. The plot, however, is fundamentally flawed and a lame excuse to fulfill a comic-book nerd's dream of seeing which of his favorite Marvel heroes would win in that fight.