Iron Man's gone a bit rusty.

Rating: 6/10 (2 May 2010)

Robert Downey Jr returns as Tony Stark in this sequel to the quirky and likable first outing for The Golden Avenger. But while John Favreau's film is reasonably entertaining and watchable it isn't up to the first movie and lacks any real dramatic bite or intensity. The final showdown is, to be frank, a letdown and the movie ends on a feeling of anti-climax. The post credit sequence restores a bit of excitement, however.
What we get: Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) seeks revenge on Tony Stark after his father dies, Stark's own father having arranged for his deportation in the 60s when he believed the physicist was after mere personal gain. (Yep, Howard Stark was a billionaire, so how that squares up is anybody's guess).
Tony Stark (Downey Jr), under pressure from the Senate to turn over the Iron Man suit to the military, discovers he is slowly dying of blood poisoning due to the chest device that powers the suit and keeps his heart beating. All his efforts to find a substitute element have so far failed. Tony, facing his mortality, is quickly going off the rails.
Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) is a Stark wannabe with a grudge -Justin has just had his defence contract frozen with the government and Hammer is itching to get even.
Meanwhile Director of Shield Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is growing increasingly concerned with Stark's erratic behaviour and plants shield agent Natasha Romanova (Scarlett Johannsen) to watch over him. Stark's best friend James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) shares Fury's concerns and Pepper Potts (Gwnyth Paltrow)finds herself CEO of Stark's company and growing disenchanted at Stark's wild partying, little suspecting the source of his depression.
In truth all these lengthy subplots don't gell, the characters are underused and Vanko's revenge motive is just a hoary old cliché. Rourke is underwhelming, Paltrow, annoying, Jackson underused and Cheadle and Johannsen excellent but also underused. While the effects are spectacular there aren't enough of them to distract from the flatness of the film. The quirky humour is largely unfunny until the final 30 minutes or so, when the movie finally springs to life.
So Iron Man 2 is reasonable overall, but it's nothing great. Downey Jr. is often reduced to playing against himself, as his character just can't open up about his problems. I'd have much preferred to see Johannsen's Black Widow clash with Stark than Whiplash - she lights up the whole screen and is a far more interesting character; Nick Fury should be much more involved. The climax largely involves Iron Man and War Machine fighting off robot drone attacks, when it SHOULD be about Vanko and Stark squaring off. Their confrontation only lasts about a minute of screen time, and disappoints.
Let's hope the Avengers movie and Thor are better....