Review: Iron Man 2

I was delightfully surprised by the original Iron Man film. Director John Favreau put together one of the best comic-to-movie adaptations of all time with Robert Downey Jr. breathing an unprecedented amount of life into the eccentric millionaire, Tony Stark.

The whole team showed the project respect and, because of that, audiences were treated to top-notch dialogue, an engaging and adult story and tons of ‘splosions. It was everything a summer blockbuster should be.

Thankfully, Iron Man 2 follows closely behind its predecessor.

Downy has gotten more comfortable in his role, Samuel L. Jackson gets more face time, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts becomes a stronger, more well-defined character and Don Cheadle does an admirable job of taking over the role of James Rhodes (a.k.a. freaking War Machine).

The dialogue was once again fantastic, but a couple plot points left me scratching my head. If it weren’t for the quality of everything else, I probably would not have been bothered by Whiplash’s convenient first encounter with Stark. I don’t want to ruin anything, but I will say that Stark pulls an unexpected stunt and Mr. Lash just happens to put himself in the right place at the right time to say “Hello.”

Speaking of our diabolical villain, Mickey Rourke is one sweet crazy-russian-super-genious. I was grinning like a dolt every time he was on-screen. His accomplice, Sam Rockwell (playing the weasel Justin Hammer) was equally well cast.

For a movie about comic book antics, Iron Man 2 was a little light on the action throughout, but a final encounter providing about 30 minutes worth of bullets, machines punching each other, lasers cutting things in half and random stuff going boom made up for it pretty well.

For my movie-going buck, Iron Man once again proves to be one of the best ways to spend a couple hours at the theater.