Iron Man 2 (3 out of 5)

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune likes to say that he believes the last thing to ever go wrong with a movie is the actors. They’re certainly the first thing to go right with Iron Man 2. One doesn’t really expect good performances from action movies anymore but they are the only thing that keeps this bloated sequel afloat, which is top heavy in a brazenly episodic way while it tries to introduce almost a half dozen new characters and act as it’s own product placement for future Marvel films to come. The film is so busy that it’s almost a breath of fresh air then when it gets on with itself in the third and gets unapologetically noisy. Director John Favreau has become a more skilled action sequence director this time out and is still a good filmmaker, but not a good enough one to refrain from buckling under the pressure to go bigger, faster, stronger for this one. Iron Man hasn’t reached the bigness, loudness, sloppiness or dumbness of the Transformers movies, but you can see it getting there.



That’s a shame to report because, when writing about the original film two years ago I saw all the elements of a great sequel to match even Spider-Man 2 falling into place. There was, at the centre, the troubled man who needed to battle the inner conflict of being a responsible human being with being a superhero, you know, the very stuff that made Marvel comics the near monopoly name in comic book popularity? The Tony Stark of Iron Man 2 isn’t so much troubled any more other than the issue he has with keeping his inflating ego in check. Here he’s basically privatised world peace, cleared the land of war and has no discernible competition in the department of crafting suits of armour to help fend off the foes of the world.



Of course, with such an advanced and important piece of technology, the government wants it, and why wouldn’t they? Can they really leave the fate of world peace in the hands of one man? Tony Stark, if you think about it, could demolish democracy as we know it, and what if he were to use the technology to indulge his personal fancy or turned against the world? He after all, not only trumps the evil of the world, but he trumps governments as well. Of course Stark isn’t giving up the suit any time soon. He is the suit and the suit is him he argues. Without one there isn’t the other.