Okay Iron Man 2 Fails to Achieve Liftoff
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Iron Man. Sure I gave it three-stars and relatively positive review, but the little robot versus bigger robot finale left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth that hasn’t vanished no matter how much the first two-thirds or so kept me relatively entertained. As beautifully cast as the film was and as much as I enjoyed the raucous set pieces I’ve never been able to get over the feeling I was overly kind to the Marvel superhero’s initial adventure, no amount of revisiting able to dispel that reaction.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert Downey Jr. in Paramount Pictures' Iron Man 2
Thinking about Iron Man 2 I am struck with almost identical feelings as I had towards to the 2008 original. I still adore Robert Downey Jr. as the title character Tony Stark and I absolutely revel in the chemistry he has with Gwyneth Paltrow playing his trusted secretary and potential love interest Pepper Potts. I love the way the dialogue crackles with playful electricity, the way returning director Jon Favreau and Tropic Thunder screenwriter Justin Theroux do their best to subvert genre conventions with whip-smart satire.
What I don’t like is how lumpy and nondescript the actual plot of the film is, or how it relies on pretty much the exact same climactic conventions of the first only this time adding a second hero to face off against a seemingly endless series of robotic Iron Man facsimiles. Like I said the first time around, after a while the whole thing starts looking like a CGI version of the battle between ED 209 and Robocop, and no matter how good the effects are the emotional emptiness of it all makes these scenes a tiny bit tiresome.
I will admit the pacing this time is far better than it was the first time around, and even when the script starts getting clunky with narrative (a huge subplot involving Stark’s health isn’t that interesting, its resolution even less so) Favreau somehow still manages to do a fine job keeping things moving. It helps considerably that Downey Jr. can do just about no wrong, and even if he’s just going through the paces and picking up a paycheck he’s still such a joy to watch he alone makes a lot of the film’s problems disappear.
As for that aforementioned plot? It more or less revolves around Tony’s attempts to keep the Iron Man technology privatized and out of the hands of the United States military even though a pernicious Senator (Gary Shandling) and duplicitous fellow arms merchant Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) are dying to get it. On top of that the narcissistic superhero also must face off against Russian Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a fellow scientific whiz who wants to see him pay for what he sees as crimes against his father by the Stark Corporation.
There’s more, not the least of which is Lt. Col. James Rhodes’ (Don Cheadle, taking over for Terrence Howard) increasing distrust of his friend Tony due to his apparently frazzled emotional state and the introduction of a new secretary (Scarlett Johansson) for the superhero industrialist after he promotes Pepper to company CEO. It’s mostly all filler, however, and a lot of it doesn’t actually make much sense (especially Rhodes’ immediate ability to pilot one of the suits even though he’s never had any training or practice inside of it), and to say I cared about any of it would be an outright lie.
If it sounds like I’m being harsh here I’m really not trying to be. For a film just over two hours in length I was never bored and very little here openly annoyed me (although the crappy overhead CGI effects accompanying the race in Monaco came extremely close to doing just that). The cast is exemplary, the quips are funny and the majority of the action scenes are genuinely exciting. Favreau just gets better and better behind the camera, and while I’d never put him in the same league as say a Christopher Nolan or a Bryan Singer he’s good enough I’d be happy to watch just about anything he chooses to direct.
I just wish I felt better about Iron Man 2 as a whole, especially the derivative and not all that interesting finale. As superhero adventures go this one is sadly more Spider-Man 3 than it is Superman II, and while it doesn’t fall to the disappointing depths of the former it doesn’t even come close to obtaining the superlative heights of the latter, either. Like the original it is a movie I don’t really mind but don’t exactly love, and if I didn’t say that in so many words the first time around not doing so this time isn’t a mistake I plan on making twice.
Film Rating: êê1/2 (out of 4)
