I have grown so very weary of the constant barrage of superhero films that have come out over the last ten years that these days I go into them with a dutiful, stiff upper lipped demeanor. I’ll sit through it, but I’m not gonna like it. The two recent exceptions to this rule have been The Dark Knight and Iron Man, so I actually walked into the theater to see this one in a state of anticipation. What set those two films apart from all the other gadgety, irradiated hero films that have been hitting the theaters every summer? I guess the simple fact that they tried to set themselves apart at all rather than just settling for looking like everything else in the genre. Not content to be a glossy, CGed clone of what people have come to expect from superhero films, they mined other material for inspiration, they tried to be something more than an origin and a fight scene. The Dark Knight looked much more like an urban crime film like Heat than it did wirework hero schlock like Daredevil. Iron Man had more in common with a smooth talking secret agent film like the James Bond series than it did Transformers. Iron Man 2 was going to live or die in my eyes based on whether it took what the first film started and ran with it, or if it instead tried to cram too many new comic booky origins and fight scenes into the script. Happily, I’m able to report that Iron Man 2 was such a good film I barely even noticed the fight scenes.
And while that statement is made a little bit tongue in cheek, it does contain some inherent truth. Yes, for purposes of full disclosure, I do love a good fight scene as much as the next fella, and the fight scenes presented here are perfectly acceptable. Where other films go wrong, though, is by building the entire film around the action scenes. Iron Man 2, instead, builds itself around the characters. All of the main characters return from the first film (with the slight caveat of Don Cheadle stepping in for Terrance Howard as James Rhodes) and it is their personal conflicts and interactions that drive the engine of the film, not the world ending subplot that leads to the robot battles. The world is dealing with how it’s changed in the wake of the invention of the Iron Man armor, Tony Stark is dealing with the fact that his electronic heart is slowly killing him, Pepper Potts is dealing with having to run a huge corporation due to Tony’s distractions. There’s some new characters here too who are able to stand toe to toe with the ones returning from the original. Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) is dealing with his late father’s humiliation and exile at the hands of the Stark family, Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is dealing with an inferiority complex due to always playing second fiddle to Stark (Scarlett Johansson is trying to figure out when she’s going to shoot her next seductive look at the camera). Everyone’s actions are colored and motivated by their relationship to Tony Stark. He is the catalyst that moves things forward, and it is the other character’s interactions with him that make up our plot. This is the reason the film is called Iron Man; not because it’s a film about a guy covered in iron, but because it’s a film with a strong, polarizing character named Iron Man at it’s center. The robot battles are incidental.
The acting here is absolutely top notch. Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow slip right back into their characters and back into their banter without losing a step. The dialogue is not just rapid fire, but rhythmic and overlapping when these two share the screen together. It feels very much like you’re watching one of the screwball comedies of old Hollywood, and it goes a long, long way toward setting this film apart from the pack. Downey’s charming rogue interpretation of Tony Stark absolutely made the first film. It ran on high octane Downey charisma, and I can’t imagine the film would have been nearly as successful, financially or critically, with anybody else in the role. Unlike, say, Johnny Depp’s performance as Jack Sparrow that was transcendent in the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, but felt derivative and sleepwalked through for the sequels, Downey is able to bring that energy from the first film into this one and add enough new layers to it to keep it fresh and involving. Paltrow is an actress that has never really impressed me, but has never really struck me as being bad either. Her performance as Pepper Potts was a revelation to me in the first film. I never would have pictured her in the role and here she was owning it so completely. She is able to constantly convey both an annoyance and an affection for Tony Stark through all their interactions, keep up with him verbally, and look still dazzling next to the parade of underwear models that gets pranced in front of her in these films. And let’s look at that again: she stands toe to toe with Robert Downey Jr. in his most hammy and scenery chewing role ever, unflinching, and she not only looks like she belongs there, she keeps up with him. Paltrow may be the unsung hero of these films.
Cheadle does a fine job stepping into the Rhodey character. I missed, somewhat, the devilish rapport that Rhodes and Stark had in the first film, but I think that had more to do with the story in this film putting the two characters at odds than it did with Cheadle not being able to recreate the charm of Howard’s performance from the first film. The transition felt as smooth as could be imagined, and I didn’t really miss Howard at any point during the film. We’ve got a saying around my house, and it goes something like, “you can’t go wrong with Don Cheadle, there’s a man you can set your watch to”. Mickey Rourke was really enjoyable and authentic as Ivan Vanko. His character is obsessed with getting revenge on Tony Stark due an ages old beef between their fathers. It seems Howard Stark and Anton Vanko worked together on the technology that makes the Iron Man suit possible, but Stark had Vanko cut out of the deal and banished back to Russia before the tech went public. Rourke’s character, then, intends to co-opt this technology and use it against Stark to ruin his life. Muscled, stringy haired, covered in gang tattoos, yet with a genius level technical know-how, the Ivan character looks absurd and implausible on paper; but damned if Rourke doesn’t pull it off and make it feel real. I believe that this guy has been rotting in poverty ridden Russia his whole life, I believe that he’s earned all those gang tattoos through brutal criminal activity, and I also believe when he puts on a pair of glasses and starts soldering high tech gear. Without the screen presence and authority that Rourke just intrinsically adds to every role he plays none of this would have seemed possible and Vanko as the villain would have been the glaring flaw in the center of this film. His obsession with a pet bird helps to humanize the character and add a bit of sympathy to him, as well, and I understand it that it was a choice that Rourke made for the character himself. It’s a tactic that sounds like something Nic Cage would try to pull off and look like a complete moron doing, but Rourke is able to perform without thought. Scarlett Johansson is a damn looker. She plays the potentially interesting character of Russian double agent The Black Widow, but as the character is written here all she is really asked to do is give Stark something to look at, pretend like she’s a normal secretary, and then shed her business attire for form fitting leather and ass kicking at the film’s climax. She is great at the eye candy portion of her role, looks fine during the action element, but wasn’t able to hint at any depth or gravity otherwise. Funnily enough, I bought her taking down large men with hyper-real martial arts, but when she had to bark orders and come off as having authority I just didn’t buy the verbal delivery. Largely it’s the paper-thin way her character was written, but she does nothing to elevate the material, so I can’t commend her performance here. But damn is she a looker.
If the first Iron Man was a success due to the captivating nature of Downey’s performance as Tony Stark, then Iron Man 2 works as a sequel because of the masterpiece of a performance that Sam Rockwell gives as Justin Hammer. Hammer is a sort of recessive gene version of Tony Stark. Everything he does is artifice, all of his actions are meant to gain him acceptance and attention. He’s just a little bit less handsome, a little bit less charming, and a little bit less talented than Stark; and because of this fatal flaw he has to become the villain of the piece. I’m sure I’m not the only person who will be likening Hammer to the Salieri character from Amadeus, but I’ll throw it out there for consideration anyways. One upping Stark becomes an obsession for Hammer, and due to it’s impossibility, that obsession becomes his downfall. Just like Mozart could fart out music that trumped anything Salieri spent years crafting, Stark can outdo Hammer in his sleep. Every moment that Rockwell is on the screen he exudes insecurity. Every time he boasts and brags and tries to play it cool he’s able to somehow convey the falsity of his actions without doing much of anything. He’s absolutely enthralling in the role. He’s funny, he’s magnetic, he’s tragic. There is a dinner scene where the palms of Hammer’s hands looked stained orange, I imagined from self-tanner. Rockwell’s performance is so nuanced, so good, that I couldn’t decide whether it was an unfortunate side effect of modern HD cameras or a hilarious choice that he made for the character. The little jig that he does when he steps out onto the stage of the Stark Expo to unveil the technology that will put Stark in the dirt was absolutely my favorite moment of the film. It’s burned into my brain and I erupt into giggle fits every time I think about it. I’m giggling right now as I type this. Seriously. If you see this film for no other reason, see it to support Sam Rockwell, who is becoming a true filmic treasure right before our very eyes.
And despite all of the time I’ve spent talking about things like acting and character, the special effects work and the action sequences are the bread and butter of these summer blockbusters, and they have to be commented on. My main problem with the first Iron Man was the rushed, unimportant feeling of the third act’s action elements. The lack of a strong villain hurt the film. Not that I didn’t like Jeff Bridges in the role, but he had to spend three fourths of the film hidden as an inconsequential side character before he was able to be revealed as a villain and really start milking the antagonism. His resulting physical confrontation with Stark felt rushed and anti-climatic. It seemed that just as the two characters started interacting in a violent manner the film was already over. This film suffers from the same sort of problem… sort of. The final big action sequence of this film is a lot grander than anything the first film had, but the stakes are never there to make it feel truly important. Stark and Rhodey spend a good fifteen minutes plowing through robotic droids, but the only time the action feels like it has any real gravity or danger is when they come face to face with Rourke’s character. Similar to the fight with Bridges’ character in the first, it felt to me that as soon as Rourke’s character really got down to business, the film was suddenly over. I would have liked to have been able to see him cause more damage, be more of a threat, and milk his plan for more suspense. The end result would have been a more effective climax. Pound for pound there is more action in the third act in this film than there is in the first film, however. The computer-generated effects are top notch; it’s never jarring when they switch from practical bits of armor to animated characters, it all feels smooth. A lot of the dogfight sequences are entertaining. It’s shot and edited in a frantic enough style to give things a kinetic feel, but they don’t go too far and make things too difficult to follow. It’s all adequate. I can’t imagine die-hard fans of big action sequences will walk away completely wowed, but because there is so much more going on here than the fights, I also can’t imagine anybody walking away disappointed.
