Taking place six months after the first Iron Man, Iron Man 2 finds a world where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has successfully "privatized world peace," but fearing other countries getting their hands on Stark's Iron Man technology the Senate seeks to have Tony hand over the technology to the government. Also seeking to steal Stark's technology is Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who wants to regain a weapons contract with the military. Complicating things further, a mysterious Russian physicist named Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) turns up to destroy Tony Stark.

Iron Man was a huge surprise when it came out in the early summer of 2008. A 2nd tier Marvel comic book, Iron Man became one of the top grossing movies of 2008, and even held it's own very well against the juggernaut that was The Dark Knight despite it's much smaller fanbase. It also resurrected Robert Downey Jr.'s career, showing that he was capable of leading a franchise despite his past mistakes, and showed that Jon Favreau was a viable action director. Since then Downey has found himself nominated for two Golden Globes winning one of them, and added yet another big action franchise to the current notch in his belt. Of course, all eyes are on Iron Man 2 to see if the movie will top it's predecessor in the expectations department, so how does it hold up.

In my opinion, Iron Man 2 equals it's predecessor. The second installment of Iron Man is funnier than the original, and it ups the ante on the action from the first movie as well. What really makes the movie though, is not the action, but the characterizations. Fleshing out Stark's narcissism as well as his inabilities to deal with his emotions opens new doors into the character. Favreau and new writer to the series Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunderdo a great job of handling a large cast that would normally sink most other comic book franchises.

The casting in this movie is superb even if it seems jarring to see so many actors and actresses playing characters that aren't typical for them. Apart from The Spirit and The Island, Scarlett Johansson hasn't played an outright action fueled character, but she equips herself admirably to play the part of a believable martial arts trained heroine. Don Cheadle does a great job taking over the role of Rhodey from Terrence Howard, and even tops his predecessor. Sam Rockwell does a superb job as Stark's rival, and a man who tries his hardest to be as iconic as Tony Stark, but fails miserably on all counts. Mickey Rourke steals nearly every scene he's in, though, as Russian physicist Ivan Vanko. I was never sure if I would be able to buy him as a Russian, but the work he put into researching for the character definitely paid off.

On the downside though, sometimes it feels as though there's too much of a rush to get from one point to the next. Scenes feel as though they move to the next before they're truly done playing out. Unfortunately, this is one of the issues of having such a large cast that needs to have proper screen time to flesh out the characters. To add to that, the second half of the film is a bit derivative of other action films. While the film may do a great job of going in a different direction than other comic book films by outing it's central character and performing a character study on a man who thrives on his popularity in that position, but in the last act of the movie it falls into the same trap as other action movies with an ending that can be cliché.

All in all, I highly recommend this movie, especially if you like movies based on comic books and if you like the first Iron Man. Franchises like Iron Man, the current Batman series, and Kick-Ass set a new benchmark for comic book movies and action movies in general. With great action, acting, characterization, and originality these movies have moved beyond their genres to capture something that extends beyond it's core audience.

4.5/5