The first big movie of the Summer is here! Packed with awesome special effects, action sequences, new villains, and the most blatant and simultaneously boring attempt at sex appeal I’ve seen since Cat Woman.
But first, the story: Now that Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) has “come out of the suit” as Iron Man, the government wants the suit and technology running it. Under the guise that it’s a dangerous weapon that can’t be left in the hands of one man, they hold a hearing to have him hand it over. The private military contracting company run by Justin Hammer (Rockwell), also want it. They want it so they can mass produce and sell it for profit. Tony refuses, and so begins the battle of wills.
We find out that his home made heart is giving him radiation poisoning, slowly killing him. This prompts him to turn the company over to Pepper Potts (Paltrow), who ,contrary to the preview, is not his girlfriend yet.
Meanwhile, back in Russia, Ivan Vanko’s father dies, hence bringing him to plot his revenge against Stark. You see, Ivan is the son of Anton Vanko, the Russian physicist who helped Tony’s father create the first arc reactor, IE the Iron Man suit technology. Much like the Stark family, the Vanko family is blessed with enormous intelligence and a gift for physics. Therefore, Ivan is the Russian equivalent of Tony Stark. The classic villain who is his equal in every way except fortune. Brilliant. Due to some back story I will not share, he hates Tony and must bring him down.
Meanwhile again(but not shown on film), at the S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) office, Nick Furry (Sam Jackson) decides he needs to place a spy over at Stark Industries in order to keep an eye out on Tony in order to monitor his actions and his health. Enter Natalie Rushman/Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson.
Through a series of events, Vanko starts working in secret for Hammer, and all hell breaks loose. Along with the help of his BFF War Machine aka Lt James Rhodes (Cheadle), Tony has to fight off a slew of droids hell bent on killing him and, because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, thousands of innocent civilians who happen to be at a weapons expo. They wanted to see new weapons first hand, and boy did they get their chance.
Let me start by saying I really liked this movie. It was fun, funny and had a great mix of character development and action. I do think the previews were a little misleading. From the preview it looked like Tony and Pepper were an item. That bit where he’s jumping out of a plane and says “you complete me”? It’s not in the movie. They don’t actually get together until the end of this movie. Ok, fine.
My other problem is that they make Vanko look like he’s going to be this big bad ass villain. When, in effect, he’s a mix of bad ass and brains. He has 2 action scenes. The rest are him playing around with computers and technology. All the stuff we would see Tony do in his garage/basement/rec room. Sam Rockwell, who plays Hammer, is barely shown in the preview. Sure he’s not a huge commercial success, but he plays the main villain in this movie. He’s the one who causes the entire chain of events that lead to the final face off because he’s a greedy corporate jerk who will stop at nothing to get what he wants. He’s the money, and Vanko is the brains and brawn.
Now for the part of the movie that I thought wasn’t great. When I saw the preview with Scarlet Johansson kicking ass, I was looking forward to seeing her doing something different. She’s been playing the same sort of role for a long time. She’s attempted doing things where she’s a sex object, like “Match Point” and “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”, but didn’t quite pull it off. This was no different. Sure she looks good. The tight clothing and low cut shirts that show off the bra in an obvious, trying too hard, way. The lines laced with innuendo. The ass that won’t quit. She looked the part. She just didn’t quite act it enough for me. Michelle Pfeiffer did a good job of being a sexy comic book character. Halle Berry didn’t.
It’s not the character that I took issue with, it’s the performance. And let’s talk about the (lack of ) performance shall we? What I mean by that is this: The movie is about 2 hours long, and Scar Jo’s big action sequence was at about 1H45mins. She apparently trained for months so that she could spend 4 minutes on screen doing one action sequence. There’s one move she does at the beginning when she’s introduced and end up in a boxing ring with Favreau, but it hardly counts. I have no doubts Favreau got that part in so he could get his hands on Johanssen.
Her one scene is chopped up bits that were edited together. There are no smooth transitions where the choreography is mind blowing. We don’t see her face for most of it, and some of it looks like it’s been fast forwarded. There’s this one kick that looks so unnatural it made me laugh. This latter part is due to crappy editing, but it’s still disappointing that after months of training they couldn’t have pulled off a 4 minute action sequence where she kicked a bunch of guy’s asses while Favereau fended off one guy. Why does this bother me? Because they made her out to be this action hero in the preview and she’s nothing more than a cheap attempts to get the guys (and girls who appreciate nice breasts and ass) salivating. Sure, she was nice to look at throughout the movie, but that’s all. She didn’t quite pull off the sexy character for me. For me. The boys behind me (and the one next to me, i’m sure) didn’t care.