Iron Man 2 Review

Though not as great as I had expected, Iron Man 2 was a delightful movie. There was a lot of craft running throughout and it was very alive. It's like the super hero movie that strived as much as it could to appeal to a moderately intelligent male audience in almost every way. I mean we have one badass superhero who surrounds himself with hard alcohol, hot women, fast cars, fine places, awesome heavy rock blaring, and the best mechanized battle armor any bleeding heart ex-arms manufacturer could hope to invent. He is Tony Stark aka Iron Man and he seems to think more than others (every other superhero) that superheroics should be fun as hell. It's like if Batman had the same values but his parents weren't murdered viciously.

One thing, this movie has a lot going on so I will try to round out all of the different subplots.The film begins almost immediately after the first, when Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) reveals to the world recklessly that he is Iron Man. The government on a dime deems the armor unsafe in Stark's hands, even though he already saved countless people with it, and presses it him to give it over to the army where I'm sure their plan is to use it to just go on Red Cross missions (not likely). But Stark is clear on not wanting to give up the armor to the government or arrogant arms manufacturer Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), and decides it the world would be safer if it were in his hands. At the same time, a genius Russian physicist named Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) arrives to kill Stark because he believes Stark's dad stole his dad's work. Also at the same time, Stark's superpowered pacemaker of sorts that keeps him alive is beginning to wear his body down and will soon kill him; this leads to a self destructive behavior in which he shuts out his closest friends including his beloved secretary Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow) and diplomatic military man Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle). And also at the same time, mysterious Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) of SHIELD assists Stark in his ventures while also giving not subtle hints to his "Avengers Initiative." So yeah, a lot's happening other than thing's blowing up.

The movie kind of pulls a Spider Man 3 where it gives you too much real-life drama and not enough good guys going toe to toe with bad guys. Except, unlike Spider Man 3, I actually found this watchable, even fun. Don't get me wrong, I love Spider Man, but Peter Parker is pretty boring and I mean Clark Kent boring. So when I saw a whole movie about Peter Parker and not Spider Man for 20% doing nothing but screwing up and trying to apologize and then 55% of him doing nothing but acting like a douche to everyone who truly cares for him or not, I was kinda pissed off. But here we have Tony Stark who enjoys being both himself and Iron Man without too much worry and is above all else a fun person. There is a point where he gets drunk and starts dancing at his birthday party in the armor. Now that's hilarious. Even if there was too much happening in the story that doesn't involve battle suits thrashing into each other, I didn't mind because it had the right touches of humour and intrigue throughout.

But then so much is happening that not all of the characters can be fully developed. Namely the villains, who most of the time make movies work (coughHeathcoughLedgercough!), Ivan Vanko has very few lines and only has two action scenes, the running time of those two together would be about three and a half minutes. So technically the more prominant villain in this would be Justin Hammer, who pulls off being a wound tight snob who always sounds like he's trying to sell you his most top quality product whenever he opens his mouth. But being played by Sam Rockwell, I can see how easy that can be. Also the character of Natalie Romanov (Scarlett Johansson), the enigmatic new secretary who we already know is going to be the kickass Black Widow, goes undeveloped but then she is not super prominant in the scheme of the movie.

But when there is action, you can just about guarentee it's cool as hell. Every time a suit comes into play, anything is a battlefield complete with rows of exploding cars, gunfire and aerial manuevers. My favorite might be a scene where Iron Man and his friend Rhodes, in another battlesuit, duke it out in his own home. I won't spoil anything but it's all quite a ride.
As far as acting and any other technical aspect goes, the movie is fine. Robert Downey, Jr. once again leads this movie and proves again that he was born to play Tony Stark. Though Mickey Rourke is very underused, despite playing the main villain, he is still a very intimidating person and even has a good emotional scene at the beginning of the film. Sam Rockwell seemed kind of flat at first but he can't really go wrong when he is playing a douchebag. Everyone else was pretty good, I can never dislike Gwenyth Paltrow, especially when her character always seems to be on the same level as Downey, Jr.'s. Don Cheadle is funny and convincing as always. Scarlett Johansson seems to be here only to introduce her character...and to dress up in that skintight Black Widow outfit, but I won't go into that again. The CGI looked like clear CGI just like the first but like the first one this is still somehow impressive. Jon Favreau shows what a talented director he is again and I am glad he gave his character Happy Hogan a bigger role than last time. All in all nothing but the length and scale of the movie were problems.

This movie gives a lot. It delivers a compelling and entertaining story, some sweet action, a comeback to a great performance, and expectations for a bigger film to come (you might catch a certain someone's shield and a certain someone else's hammer here and there). So I highly recommend Iron Man 2, it's just as good as the first and was a very enjoyable movie. Just don't expect wall-to-wall action. Honestly, I think we can all stand to pay attention to a story that actually contains story and not action posing as story. You know, Michael Bay movies.

This has been an Invincible review from Your Modest Guru. Thanks for reading.