Bulky But Solid

Rating: 9/10 (15 July 2010)

One major complaint I had against the first movie was its lack of that thing super-heroes and villains do: fighting. It had plenty of charm, good acting, and a decent plot, but the action was shoehorned into a mediocre 5-minute bout.
The sequel largely remedies this in several great and intense scenes. Yes, what we get is overkill, but after the the first film I wanted overkill. Frenetic, heavy-metal overkill.
And if you have to sacrifice a little of the charm, well fine, just not too much. But truthfully, the same chemistry that made the first film great is still there, just hidden behind the loud effects. Robert Downey Jr. is brilliant as Tony Stark (as usual), and still has his great verbal moments with Pepper Potts, his secretary played by Gwenyth Paltrow and friend Rhodey, now played by Don Cheadle (an improvement over Terrance Howard).
While I liked Jeff Bridges as the villain in the first film, it was probably because he lacked the usual character extravagances of a comic book villain and was just a brilliant businessman out to kill (literally) the competition. The sequel gives us two new bad guys with more nuanced characterizations. As Vanko Rourke is menacing physically, but that isn't the scary part about him. Instead Rourke contains a subtle rage and brutality behind a cool, grinning expression, which is more terrifying than overt, cackling serial villainy. Unlike the first movie's evil industrialist mastermind, Rockwell is neither evil nor a mastermind as Justin Hammer, but still great as an incompetent, comic-relief foil to Tony Stark.
But the film also tries to pack in a lot more than it should, like Scarlett Johansson in tights (visual appeal aside) and Samuel L. Jackson (as important as Nick Fury is). And the film is a little too long and slow in the middle. The plot could easily have been condensed, but as with so many of Tony and Pepper's awkward conversations, it takes its sweet time to get to the point. But as saddled as it is with too many elements, the movie is never dull, and unlike other bloated super-movies like Spider-Man 3, it doesn't disrespect the characters it had to pack in.