*** SPOILER ALERT***** If you don't want to know anything about the film, don't read these comments.Today's movie was Iron Man 2. I saw it at the AMC Loews Metreon here in San Francisco in digital projection. It was everything a summer movie should be and it fell just short of being a great sequel. The movie is faster and louder then the original but not as clever. It takes you on a thrill ride, but doesn't really give you anything new.
Robert Downey Jr. continues to personify the role of Tony Stark and behaves exactly as someone would who now has super-powers, giddy, egotistical and over confident. But some of his actions seem driven by the plot rather than what the character would do.
Their are sub-plots involving the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. played by Samuel Jackson, Scarlett Johanssen and Clark Gregg. Gwyneth Paltrow is back as Pepper Potts, Stark's assistant, love interest and new CEO of Stark Enterprises.
The key to a great super-hero movie is threatening villains. Here we have two; Mickey Rourke as a Russian physicist who blames the Stark family for his lot in life and designs a weapon that turns him into the villain Whiplash and Sam Rockwell as an arms dealer and rival of Tony Stark who teams up with Whiplash to destroy him. The Rockwell character is written as more of a buffoon then a serious arms dealer and I felt the screenplay took a wrong turn with him. Or maybe it was the casting of Sam Rockwell, but the character never elevates above the level of con artist and hardly seems a sinister threat to Tony Stark. On the other hand Mickey Rourke is menacing from the moment we meet him.
Don Cheadle joins the cast as Lt. Colonel James Rhodes, replacing Terence Howard from the first film. He gets to don a suit and becomes the hero War Machine. It is up to Iron Man and War Machine to defeat Whiplash before he destroys Stark Industries.
And it's in the fight scenes where the movie asked us to suspend logic for a little bit. Sometimes the machinations of the script make some of the fight scenes feel forced and don't really pay off, and the final battle against Whiplash's robot droids lacks emotional punch.
The movie is highly entertaining and hardly gives you a chance to catch your breath to see some of the lapses of logic in the plot. But like Tony Stark, just go with the flow.
At the Movie House rating *** stars
p.s. remember to stay till the end of the credits.
2 comments:
Joe,
Enjoying the reviews. For this one, however, I would add a spoiler alert as well. For those who haven't seen it yet you're giving away some key stuff (in my opinion) that they should find out in the film. I'd list what they were but then if you do add the alert, I'd be the spoiler!
Ellen
Good point. I just added one and will do so for any new movies I screen.
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