Iron Man 2

City Paper Grade: B

by Drew Lazor

THE STARKNESS: Robert Downey Jr. suits up again as billionaire playboy/superhero Tony Stark in Jon Favreau's Iron Man 2.

[City Paper Grade: B ]

What if Tony Stark was real? What if, between reporting on bombings and body counts, news anchors analyzed the goings-on of a billionaire weaponsmaker/superhero so cool that folks cheer when he screams “I have successfully privatized world peace!” at Senate hearings? In real life, we’re scared on our own soil. In Iron Man Land, with Stark’s shadow looming over the stars and bars like a heavily armed beach umbrella, we don’t agonize over North Korea stockpiling warheads or Muslim extremists cultivating splinter cells — why should we, when the dude with the suit eats his Wheaties, just like us?

Picking up after Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) reveals his Iron Man identity, Jon Favreau’s sequel has a new baddie (Mickey Rourke), a new hottie (Scarlett Johannson), a new business rival (Sam Rockwell) and a new BFF (Don Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard). Stark, resisting pressure to surrender his suit to the military, ensures the government that America’s enemies are lagging behind technologically. He’s wrong  — the vengeful Russian Ivan Vanko (Rourke), hellbent on righting past wrongs, builds some toys of his own, nearly besting Iron Man with a pair of high-voltage double-dutch ropes. This, coupled with the fact that the palladium running his heart/power source is slowly poisoning his blood, causes Stark to lose focus — but he’s forced to snap into it after arms-race player Justin Hammer (Rockwell) hires Vanko and funds a fully outfitted army of bots set to kill.

Justin Theroux, tackling his second-ever screenplay, exploits Downey’s gift of glib, keeping things popcorn-friendly with throwaway giggles that distract from the movie’s many ridiculous moments. (Did I really just watch Stark build a DIY particle accelerator in his garage?) Favreau’s put together an unchallenging, easy-to-watch two hours that’ll appeal to anyone who got lost in the 2008 original. But the movie also posits, clunkily, what’d it be like to live in an America where peace of mind is as simple as knowing a wiseacre playboy can incinerate any threat with a wave of his gilded palm. In real life, Times Square almost turned to rubble. In Iron Man Land, Stark has a portable suit that shrinks down to the size of a briefcase, meaning the key to domestic tranquility could also be categorized as a carry-on item aboard a Southwest Airlines flight.