Friday, May 14, 2010

Iron Man 2

In the aftermath of revealing himself to be the armored superhero Iron Man, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) must contend with failing health, a tumultuous relationship with his former secretary Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), a senator (Gary Shandling) who wants to expropriate his technology for military use, scheming competitor Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) and Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a renegade Russian scientist bent on revenge.


Superhero sequels are a decidedly mixed bag. For every The Dark Knight that takes elements introduced in the original to new heights, there’s an X-Men: The Last Stand that threatens to murder an entire film franchise with its mediocrity. Iron Man 2 falls somewhere in between. Given the surprising success of the original, it was almost inevitable that there would be a drop-off the second time around. Fortunately, the decline is not too precipitous.


Helmed again by Jon Favreau (who co-stars as bodyguard Happy Hogan), Iron Man 2 preserves the first film’s humor and sense of fun. Justin Theroux’s script is full of snappy banter and laugh-inducing lines (Hammer refers to one of his munitions as being so smart that “it makes Ulysses look like it was written in crayon”), but this is no Fantastic Four. Stark is grappling with serious reservations regarding his limitations and legacy and there are plenty of well-rendered combat sequences. Iron Man does more than just fly around and shoot lasers this time.


The acting varies in quality. Downey is brilliant once again and fully inhabits the irrepressible nutcase that is Stark. Paltrow, Favreau and Samuel L. Jackson (as SHIELD director Nick Fury) make the most of their expanded roles. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise is Scarlett Johansson, who doesn’t kill the film with her reliably poor acting ability. As Natasha Romanov, a SHIELD agent undercover as Stark’s secretary, all she’s asked to do is kick ass, look good and drop the occasional line of Latin. She does all three well.


On the opposite end of the spectrum, Don Cheadle is completely miscast as Lt. Col. James Rhodes, Stark’s close ally. While Cheadle is a better actor than the man he replaced in the role (Terrance Howard, who’s no slouch), his performance seemed wooden and forced. And while Rockwell gets some good lines, his bombastic shtick wears thin after awhile. The hardest performance to decipher is Rourke’s. It’s evident that he’s trying hard and he does give Vanko some idiosyncratic flair (gold teeth, a fondness for birds), but the character ultimately comes across as more ridiculous than menacing at times.


Though the recent spate of Marvel Comics films show above-average character development, they are still, primarily, action movies. As such, nobody is expecting wholly believable plot development. But even for this genre, Iron Man 2 strains credulity. Rhodes’ theft of Stark’s armor and subsequent transformation into War Machine happened in little more than a blink, while Hammer’s implicit trust in the unhinged Vanko left me shaking my head.


It’s probably fair to say that Iron Man 2 bites off a little more than it can chew. Minus the illogical plotting and creeping character bloat, however, it remains an entertaining and solidly crafted film. It will be interesting to see what’s next (The Avengers, most likely) for this cast and crew.


7.5/10

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