Iron Man 2

Being at something of a loose end last night, I went to see Iron Man 2 with Moogdroog, Vlad and a friend of Vlad's. After picking up Vlad and friend from the city (drunk and five minutes late, as usual)*, we stopped by Moogdroog's place and went to the shiny Vue multiplex outside York.

I didn't have high expectations of the film. The first Iron Man was amusing and distracting enough, but to give a meaningful judgment I suppose you need to be a comic book fan, which I'm not; it had explosions and fighting with enough of a trace of wit and irony, at least, to keep it from turning into Transformers. I don't remember much about it to be honest.

This sequel is pretty much more of the same. Lots of special effects, some of them impressive. There were two really good things about it: Robert Downey Jr himself, and the part where psychotic Russian evil genius Mickey Rourke strides onto the Monaco Grand Prix race track and smashes all the cars to bits with his lightning whips. And while the story is uninspired, the dialogue and performances manage to keep enough life in it to last till the end credits.

On the down side, Scarlett Johansson is wasted as a hard-as-nails-and-improbably-sexy-yet-ice-cold female special agent ninja Black Widow. The role is probably necessary as a gender counterbalance to the leering playboy sex-pest that is the central character, but it's not exactly one of Johansson's most challenging roles. Gwyneth Paltrow spends most of the film looking like she's about to cry or be punched in her simpering face. And then there's the product placement, but that's par for the course these days.

I thought the real problem was that I ended up feeling rather sorry for the main villain, Rourke's Ivan Vanko. The poor guy had a really tough upbringing in Siberia with his disgraced and exiled father, and all he wants is to exact revenge on Stark, whom he blames for his family's fate. He cobbles together his homemade power suit from what looks like tin cans and bits of twine before smashing up Stark's orgy of wealth and privilege at Monaco. He never really stands much of a chance against the resources of his nemesis, who spends most of the film strutting about like the self-obsessed wanker he is.

I couldn't tell if the film's apparent celebration of fascistic militarism was supposed to be ironic or not. The movie starts with Stark landing on a stage surrounding by fireworks, a huge American flag and a team of dancing girls in hotpants.

Subtle

Jon Favreau is no Paul Verhoeven, that's for sure. The camera pays a little too much attention to the girls not to be salacious. Stark is a great character largely because he is a wanker: born into the millionaire lifestyle like Bruce Wayne, minus the brooding self-importance and tortured emo double-life, plus an unhealthy dose of the arms industry. But are we seriously supposed to identify and sympathise with Stark on this level? Isn't the character of Ivan Vanko, the poverty-stricken underdog driven mad with desire for vengeance, much more tragic and sympathetic? When he isn't killing innocent civilians, I mean.

Spot the wanker

Spot the underdog

Spot the dog

* I mean Vlad was drunk and late, not me.