Iron Man 2 entertained me from beginning to end. Who knew that what I was looking for in a superhero movie was wall-to-wall banter, occasionally interrupted by games of Rock'em Sock'em Robots?

To me it was a fine second act that picked up where the first film left off in the sense that it presupposed you were fond of these characters and the Iron Man concept. That way, it could have Tony and Pepper and Rhodey take their BFF chops-busting patter just a little too far, make it a little too manic, as their collective situation took a turn for the worse. It could make Tony's cockiness, like at the Senate hearing, seem like it clearly has the potential to be destructive for him, even if in the moment you enjoy his triumph over his rivals. It could make the quest of rogue nations and unscrupulous scientists to produce Iron Men of their own feel totally logical, difficult to pull off but dangerous should they succeed, not just to the country but to Stark personally.

With that foundation, you just trot out a suite of funny performances from actors who make their every appearance on screen feel like a pissing contest with the other characters, an attempt to impress them with their intelligence and wit and charm, even though the situation is such that that usually doesn't cut it. Robert Downey Jr. pulled off pushing Stark's charm offensive into purely offensive territory, and then dialing it back down in a way where you'd forgive him. Sam Rockwell played Justin Hammer like the scrapped pilot episode of Tony Startk, before it was recast and recut and became a huge hit; I enjoyed how he was always nervously projecting alpha-male vibes even though he was constantly two steps behind of everyone he dealt with. Don Cheadle has Terrence Howard's easy familiarity with Tony built in, but I bought the way he was constantly on the lookout for a way both to take care of his friend and best him in some way or other--a friendly rivalry where both the friendship and the rivalry were intact. I'd actually forgotten how effective and adorable Gwyneth Paltrow is in the girl friday role, and thought it was funny that she brought that same skill set of quietly but firmly dismissing idiocy in favor of getting the job done to her new role as CEO. Mickey Rourke was scary and convincingly single-minded--I dug how he mostly avoided giving a Hannibal Lecture and never deviated from a simple goal of revenge, which as we learn was sort of justified to boot. The two iffiest performances are the proto-Avengers turns from Samuel L. Jackson and Scarlett Johansson, but in both cases what you might see as weaknesses I ended up digging: Nick Fury feels like he dropped in from a whole 'nother movie, which I guess is how the world's top spy would feel in a superhero world like this one, and even if it wasn't intentional, maybe emotionless and dead behind the eyes is precisely how an experienced double-agent spy-assassin like the Black Widow would be.

Normally I'd argue that as with any superhero story, the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is the fight sequences. In this case, the movie is so much more a battle of wits than a battle of emotion that I think that's actually less true than it usually is, but as it turns out the fights were fun and as well choreographed as you're likely to see in a superhero movie. They took advantage of their environments, they utilized the unique capabilities of the armor suits involved, and with the exception of the flying chase (which was way too darkly lit, probably to hide the CGI work) their stages and stakes were easy to understand. I mean, you have to hand it to a fight scene where a key beat is having your limo driver run a dude over and pin him to a chainlink fence.

Most importantly, I never felt like my intelligence was being insulted, and trust me, after going to see freaking Clash of the Titans in the freaking theater, I definitely needed that from my summer action blockbuster. If anything, I felt like the stupidity of the cool-guy trappings Stark surrounds himself with was being winked at--that gloriously tasteless AC/DC stripperobics routine at the beginning, for example, felt like the movie was Steely Danning the G4 generation. And the addition of characters never felt like superhero-sequelitis to me; the various combinations of players moved the plot forward rather than weighing it down or making it scatterbrained. A delight! I hope you enjoy it if you see it.

Posted by Sean T. Collins at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)