Iron Man 2 (12A, running time: 125min) is unapologetically
Robert Downey Jr’s movie, but
Scarlett Johansson adequately ticks the big-screen boobs box.
Wow, this is actually better than the first one!
Thatâs how I felt for a good hour of this cracking sequel, before director Jon Favreau spectacularly lost control of his blockbuster and it all crashes and burns in a mega-noisy Transformers-style CGI-robots-expensively-bash-the-crap-out-of-each-other finale.
Even so, youâd have to have cold plutonium running through your veins not to delight in the super-sprightly return of Robert Downey Jr, ridiculously charismatic as ever as billionaire playboy Tony Stark , the engineering genius with a fatal heart condition who survives by building his own indestructible âIron Manâ body armour and becoming No.1 hero in the US.
Interview: Robert Downey Jr reveals the things that hack him off
âI have successfully privatised world peace,â Stark announces to the government committee who want him to turn his suit over to the military. âI am your nuclear deterrent.â
Yet any potentially interesting exploration of Iron Man as a human Trident is soon brushed aside as we trip through a series of other fly-by-night diversions.
Itâs that old bugbear of every based-on-a-comic-book-movie sequel: too many characters, too little time.
Mickey Rourke is superbly cast and splendidly underplays his vengeful baddie, Russian physicist Ivan Vanko, but you never fully understand what his beef is.
A credible support team of Sam Rockwell, Samuel L Jackson, Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow are criminally underused, but then itâs Downey Jrâs movie and heâs not sharing.
The only thing upstaging him is his characterâs wicked gadgetry (see-through smart phones, jet boots â I want!), his latest toy being Scarlett Johansson, whose only function, seemingly, is to provide the plot with boobs.
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