Strike while the irony is hot
There is some-thing supremely ironical about Robert Downey Jr. playing the superhero known as Iron Man, representing the insouciant face of America, despite its (and his) collective ups and downs. In days past, the role of Tony Stark might have gone to some more stolid figure — Tom Cruise, say, or Jeff Bridges — instead of the feverish confidence man that Downey has honed as a character over a lifetime. At one point early on in Iron Man 2, Stark steals thunder at a Senate hearing meant to pry his Iron Man technology away from him. He mugs for the media on his way out the door: “The pleasure has been mine… I think you know I’ve always been good at pleasuring myself.” Wink, wink.
A Hollywood movie that posts America atop the superpower heap in the 21st century, almost like the Cold War never ended, almost like Cruise soaring the skies in the Reagan-era Top Gun? Now, that’s ironic.
But of course, Stark is a free agent, or at least thinks he is, after designing an advanced metallic skin capable of leaving even the most competent underwear bomber quaking in his BVDs. He has the technology and doesn’t want to share — particularly with the military, as is often the case in comic superhero movies.
In steps Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a rival weapons manufacturer who wants to trump Stark and sell his own iron suits to the US military. He enlists a certain Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), disgruntled son of a former Russian scientist who helped build the original arc reactor technology with Stark’s physicist dad. Hammer wants Vanko to build super suits; Vanko simply wants revenge, and to see Rourke do his gladiator-on-’roids bit with two nuke-charged whips at the Monaco speedway is one of the simple pleasures of Iron Man 2.
Fortunately, director Jon Favreau also has a comic touch, something that makes this sequel a tad more palatable than other big budget comic movies that have come and gone recently. Casting is spot-on, with character actors peppering the whiz-bang-crash scenery with one-liners. Speaking of pepper, Gwyneth Paltrow is back as Stark’s assistant, Pepper Potts, and it’s great to see the new CEO of Stark Enterprises dress down her hubris-driven boss in his own office. On the other hand, Rockwell boogalooing to Average White Band’s Pick Up the Pieces is also worth a cheesy grin. Don Cheadle shows up (replacing Terrance Howard) as Col. James Rhodes, Stark’s buddy who tries to stop the bilious billionaire from destroying his own substantial global goodwill (something George W. Bush could have used after 9/11). Samuel Jackson is on board as the patch-wearing Nick Fury, director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Then there’s Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson), whose figure-hugging outfits in every scene amount to a very special effect indeed.
As far as the other special effects go, Iron Man 2 has but a few standout scenes of mass destruction, mercifully bracketing its considerable length. (The one moment that draws titters from the audience is Iron Man’s rather effeminate manner of gently landing and lifting off the ground — palms downward to release little jets of steam, à la “I’m a little teacup.”) No new revelations about the character’s powers, though the arrival of the S.H.I.E.L.D. apparatchiks adds some zest to the party, as does a pack of Iron Man drones sent to dispatch the mad inventor.
According to Favreau (who cut himself a paycheck, reprising his role as Stark’s chauffeur “Happy” Hogan), there was an attempt to develop a subplot about Iron Man’s drinking problem from the comic book’s “Demon in a Bottle” storyline. More irony as Downey sips scotch and lurches around in his Iron Man armor for a birthday party crowd. Certainly, there’s some philosophical questing going on here about true identity, as Stark argues before a Senate committee that the suit is not Iron Man; he is. Meanwhile Rourke, who reportedly earned B-list money to play Vanko, is said to have spent his own cash to buy gold teeth and a cockatoo and learn Russian to “flesh out” his character. He generates some sympathy as a tattooed ex-convict who out-chesses Rockwell’s supremely annoying arms manufacturer. Watch out, also, for cameos by Stan Lee (playing CNN host Larry King), Jack White and Attack of the Show geek pinup Olivia Nunn; there are also some laughs generated by Garry Shandling as Senator Stern, out to reveal the emperor’s new clothes.
But the show mostly belongs to Downey as the motormouth Stark, a self-described “phoenix rising from the ashes” to bring the world peace. Downey is, as always, playing himself (or playing with himself), the blood toxicity monitor he carries around in the movie a reminder of his wild, substance-abusing past. But here it’s the palladium implants he has stuffed into his artificial Stark heart that are causing his demise. He struggles to overcome his addiction to palladium, power and fame in order to find his inner Tony Stark. Doesn’t he know that, like the band America sang, God never did give nothing to the Tin Man that he didn’t, didn’t already have?
