Iron Man 2

Well, it's certainly not Dogtooth, I'll tell you that much.

As per my previous review, Tony Stark, played by Robert Downey Jr, is an
egotistical womanising technical genius who invented himself a super-suit and
declares himself basically Lord Protector Of The Whole World. I'm not seeing
how the Iron Man suit is *that* brilliant, one dude with jetboots is hardly
going to achieve world peace overnight, but hey, let's go with it. Stark is the
darling of the world, and his suit trumps every military in the world to such a
degree that world peace breaks out spontaneously.

This makes Mickey Rourke maaaaaaaad. Because Mickey Rourke is the son of Tony
Stark's dad's business partner. The Starks got megarich, the Vankos got
deported back to Russia and spent a lot of time in a gulag. So, since he's a
genius physicist too (yes, really, Mickey Rourke is a genius physicist.. In a
film with flying robot suits, that's still the stand-out implausible bit) - he
decides he too will build himself a super suit using scrap metal and his dad's
old blueprints, and go kick Tony Stark's ass. Game on. He fails, but not before
beating up the entire Monaco Grand Prix and taking a Rolls Royce Phantom to the
solar plexus with no apparent ill effects. This is one seriously macho
physicist we're talking about here.

Having failed to get anywhere with that plan, he teams up with Sam Rockwell who
is a staggering asshole of a weapons contractor who is a rival of Stark's and
who not unreasonably thinks that all that stands between Vanko and kicking
Stark's ass in public is millions of dollars of investment and resources. And
having millions of dollars and a vested interest in seeing Stark have his ass
handed to him publically, he is happy to oblige.

Meanwhile, Tony Stark is being sub-plotted to death, what with the nuclear
reactor in his chest poisoning him to death, and the US Military and Senate
trying to get the suit off him. Eventually, they manage to do so, which gives
us an excuse to make Stark's airforce mate James "Rhodey" Rhodes into the ever
popular Iron Man knockoff, War Machine.

Anyway, long story short, big robots run amok at the end, and lots of things
explode.

The script's good, full of punchy dialogue, and the casting's great. I was
thinking, if anyone other that Robert Downey Jr was behaving like such an
absolute cockend, you'd not stomach it. Imagine Tom Cruise in the role, he'd be
a nightmare. Robert Downey Jr brings out the self-destructive loser side of the
character really well though, and just makes the egotistical stuff highly
amusing. Gwyneth Paltrow isn't nearly as winsome as she used to be, but that's
OK because we've now got Scarlet Johansson as an asskicking secret agent. Some
have questioned the need for the character in the film, but as far as I'm
concerned, anyone who questions the need for Scarlet Johansson in a leather
catsuit needs their head looking at. Mickey Rourke is suitably scenery chewing,
Sam Rockwell is highly entertaining, Don Cheadle is kind of wondering how his
career suddenly took this turn, and Samuel L Jackson appears to remind us that
like it or not, there *is* going to be an Avengers movie.

Overall, it's pretty good. Gets going nicely, there's quite a bit of big robot
smashy, and unlike, say, Terminator Salvation, the bits inbetween are pretty
fun too. You know what kind of film this is already, so suffice to say, it's a
good one.