Iron Man 2 Review

Seeing as for the past three years the most anticipated summer movie has failed to meet expectations, it shouldn't be surprising that the same thing happened this year with Iron Man 2. Taking more cues from Transformers than Star Trek, the action sequel does a passable job at following up the gargantuan success of the first film, but suffers from a convoluted and shallow plot.

The film follows Tony Stark (Portrayed by Robert Downey Jr.) as he deals with his imminent death from palladium poisoning, the government attempting to seize the Iron Man tech to create an army of super-soldiers, and new villain Whiplash (Played by Mickey Rourke) casting doubt on Stark's ability to keep America safe. Any one of those plotlines would have sufficed for the entire film, but director Jon Favreau tries to fit too much information in, and not enough character development.

Downey Jr. does as great a job as ever, but is forced to portray Stark in such a negative light that by the end we seriously doubt that we really care about the hero of our story. I found myself enjoying Sherlock Holmes more than this, and found Iron Man 2 a little too cold and clinical going into the second and third acts. Sam Rockwell is one of the unadmired gems of the picture, offering much needed comic relief in a semi-villainous role. Mickey Rourke does an decent job with Whiplash, but the character is far to one dimensional and cartoonish to really take seriously. He's certainly no Heath Ledger.

Even the technical departments have difficulty putting something comprehensive together. Cinematographer Matthew Libatique’s work makes Cloverfield look like Citizen Kane. John Debney’s score is corny, and melodramatic, lacking any main musical theme to pull the film together. Even the visual effects look like they were taken out of a Saturday morning cartoon. Despite those problems, Iron Man 2 managed to avoid total ridicule using witty dialogue, humor, and charisma, and is far better than most of the films released previously this year.

B-