On the couch

Right from its first teaser trailer Iron Man was a revelation. It came across as that little bit cooler than previous comic book movies. A little bit more grown up.

This wasn’t some parable of teenage angst, or a morose treatise on the beast of fury that lurks within everyone. This had billionaires and booze and bad guys that were, by dumbass action movie standards, relatable.
One set didn’t want to control the world by stealing ozone or irradiated gold. They wanted weapons. Bigger, better weapons than their enemy had so they could kill them more efficiently. The other wanted to continue to make a fat pile of cash selling dangerous toys uninterrupted by pangs of conscience of guilt.
Bullying and greed. Not the most attractive of motivating forces, but understandable nonetheless.
This relatability in motive made up for the fact that the hero was A) a jackass; B) a billionaire genius and C) a functional alcoholic – that and Robert Downey Junior is a brilliantly likable actor who could probably kick each and every audience member in the groin and still make them think he was charming.
Iron Man 2 lacks that relatability. And the groin-kicking charm is somewhat muted as well. Picking up some time after the first film, Iron Man (Tony Stark) is now a fixture on the geo-political scene, stamping out terrorist problems wherever they occur. He’s also being pursued by the US government to give up the technology for his super suit so that the army can put it into mass production.
To top all this off his little heart gizmo seems to be slowly poisoning him to death and his biggest professional rival has joined forces with a mad Russian scientist with a long-held grudge against Stark’s old man.
As seems to be virtually the rule for comic book movie sequels, the cast for Iron Man 2 is swollen with famous faces playing characters culled from the subjects B-list material. With a few exceptions, Batman Returns and X-Men 2 for example, this tends to make the second flick too long, too dumb or too confusing. Or, in the case of Spiderman 3 all of the above.
While Iron Man 2 doesn’t come close to the horrors of disco dancing Spidey, the overlapping stories of corporate hijinx, industrial espionage, super villain whip-crackery, love, lust, impending death and daddy issues dose leave the film feeling a little unfocused. Actually a LOT unfocused.
It isn’t without its pleasures though. To start with, the cast is excellent. RDJ continues to make a brilliant Stark while Sam Rockwell as smarmy rival billionaire, Justin Hammer, and Mickey Rourke as tooled-up, buffed-up Russian scientist-with-a-grudge, Whiplash, fit the roles of bad guys with palm-rubbing aplomb.
While Rourke might lay claim to the worst Russian accent since Shur Sean Connery schlurred his way through The Hunt for Red October, he brings a brilliantly batty intensity to his turn as Ivan Denko. Rockwell is, as always, a creepy kook with stacks of charm.
Scarlett Johannson pops up as Iron Man’s new personal assistant with a secret but serves mostly as eye candy and the butt of ogling jokes. Also making an appearance is Don Cheadle as Stark’s best (and most long-suffering) buddy, Rhodey. The role was filled in the first film by Terrence Howard but contract quibbles saw the folk at Marvel underscore how utterly unreplaceable even their lead actors aren’t. It’s a shame for Howard as the role is considerably beefier this time around and Cheadle does good work with it.
Despite the cluttered story, Favreau still remembers to pack the film with an assortment of entertaining action scenes including a set-to at a race track between Iron Man and Mickey Rourke armed with a pair of laser whips and a battle royale pitting Stark and Rhodes against a hoard of robo-drones.
Also making a return, to a lesser extent, is the pithy dialogue. Most of it involves Downey Junior and Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts but Sam Jackson drops in to bark a couple of put-downs as Nick Fury, returning to tie Marvel’s flicks together as they build toward 2012’s Avengers movie.
After the success of the first flick, Iron Man 2 was always going to have to be something special to measure up to the original and in that respect, it failed. While it lacks some of the charm and definition of the first, it’s still funny, interesting and exciting. A great way to waste two hours.