Another iron in the fire for Downey Jr.

Rating: 9/10 (24 December 2011)

This was a full-on high tech bag of laughs from beginning to end, on an even grander scale than Iron Man 1.
Mickey Rourke plays a superb adversary, Ivan Vanko, with his homemade killer suit replete with electrified whipping cables. The action during the Monaco race scene is breathtaking: the crashes and impact feel realistic even in its ridiculous sci-fi context.
Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr., suffers a bit of Iron Man Pox due to clocking up too many air miles in his hefty flight suit. This is not helped by other foes and colleague Lt. Col. James 'Rhodey' Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, hopping on the iron-clad bandwagon to steal his thunder; so-much-so that I even felt a tinge of sympathy for the billionaire narcissist.
Appearances by Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow are notable only as welcome eye candy – especially Johansson in her skin tight butt-kicking suit – but failed to make and real impact with their performances, this mostly due to weak characterisations within the script.
Topped off by a good performance by Sam Rockwell as Stark's jealous slime-ball rival, Justin Hammer, Iron Man 2 is an action-fest that will appeal to many, but especially CGI graphics nerds with a sense of humour.