Though the highly anticipated “Iron Man 2” qualifies as a hilarious, entertaining, irreverent, and openly patriotic summer blockbuster well worth the price of admission (and then some), like most sequels, the continuing story of Tony Stark and company does falls short of its predecessor, especially in what I call the “lift department.” Superhero films that transcend their genre contain an unforgettable moment or two that lifts the hair on the back of your neck, pulls you out of your chair, and urges you to stand and cheer. The original “Iron Man” had a number of those moments. And while the follow-up has a whole lot going for it, this is where it most lacks.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has privatized world peace. Yes, all on his own as Iron Man, Stark has whipped the world into behaving itself and it’s completely gone to his already bloated head. Obviously this wasn’t accomplished through the changing of our enemies’ hearts, but rather through the superior firepower that comes with being Iron Man. This is the reason/excuse our government, led by the oily Senator Stern (a very funny Gary Shandling) uses to demand Stark turn over the suit to the Pentagon. During a hearing televised on CSPAN, Stark can’t bring himself to politely decline. With his ego red-lining, (he has saved the world, after all), he both insults the Senator and dares him to try and take the suit away from him.
Game on.
In this vacuum steps a rival arms dealer, Justin Hammer (a delightfully twitchy Sam Rockwell), who’s desperate to replicate the Iron Man technology and scoop up all that Pentagon money while at the same time fulfilling a desire to humiliate Stark by elbowing Iron Man into irrelevancy. Hope arrives in the form of Ivan Vanko (a quietly menacing Mickey Rourke), a Russian scientist burning with both a hate for Stark and the technical know-how to fulfill Hammer’s mercenary desires.
As a whole, if you look real close, the film’s overall narrative doesn’t hold together all that well. But the individual pieces are so delightfully scripted and performed you don’t really notice… or care. Through the first act and right up until the dynamite initial–and very well staged and shot–encounter between Stark and Vanko, everything pops as all the familiar themes and characters effortlessly pick up right where they left off. And while the second act, except for an awkward and surprisingly claustrophobic sequence involving Stark’s birthday party, never ceases to hold your attention and entertain, the structure just isn’t there, nor is the action.
There is a lot going on with the characters, though maybe too much. The relationship between the luscious Pepper Potts and Stark is as Tracy/Hepburn as ever, but the troubling dynamic between Stark and his deceased father feels artificial, especially when it results in the solving (seemingly out of nowhere) of one of Stark’s biggest problems. One area where you do feel the narrative pieces fall satisfactorily into place is with the arrival of Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Much track is laid for the Avenger team Fury’s putting together and you will want to hang around for a post-credit scene.
One area where the sequel improves on the original is with its climax. This time it’s big and lusty and exciting as opposed to rock ’em sock ’em robots duking it out on the Hollywood freeway. But back to the lack of lift….
There were three moments in the first “Iron Man” that took my movie-loving breath away. Stark’s initial escape in his crude Iron Man suit, his first flight, and that delicious moment when he figured out that being a superhero means no longer watching helplessly as tragedy plays out on the television. Iron Man flying off to lay waste to those Jihadists terrorizing that village was a moment this country had been collectively waiting for our Hollywood Masters to deliver since the attacks on September 11th.
The best way to describe the sequel is to think about what the original would’ve been like without those moments; worthwhile and fun but far from a classic.
Jon Favreau’s direction and the snappy dialogue, like most of the performances (as Black Widow, Scarlett Johansson is a little in over her head with this cast, but kick some ass she does) are uniformly excellent, and if I haven’t said so before, Robert Downey Jr. is a friggin’ movie star in the very best sense of the word. Is there another actor out there capable of throwing around a character’s rank narcissism and irreverence but never at the expense of sincerity? He’s a marvel to watch, if you’ll pardon the pun.
If anything, this second Iron Man chapter is even more patriotic than the first. The military, as personified by Don Cheadle’s Lt. Col. Rhoades, is treated with utmost respect and Stark’s language about what he’s doing is never qualified with any of that maddening, namby-pamby United NationSpeak that’s plagued every movie made since Bush beat Gore. Stark says with no embarrassment whatsoever that he is “securing America,” and that he’s proud to “serve a great nation.” He even throws a kind word to the Boy Scouts of America. And later, a very funny and not-so-subtle riff on the megalomania surrounding Obama iconography ranks as iconoclastic when compared to what we’re seeing from today’s lockstep film industry.
So go! Have fun. Take the kids. And thank Favreau and company for proving that in the talented hands of those willing you can still make timeless universal themes cool, entertaining, and very profitable.
In the immortal words of Justin Hammer: “God bless Iron Man. God bless America.”
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