Because of his superhero alter ego, Tony Stark must contend with deadly issues involving the government, his own friends and new enemies.
The movie starts with Anton Vanko, the father of the movie's main villain, Ivan Vanko, dying and watching on TV Tony Stark revealing his Iron Man identity. Anton dies and we see a revengeful Ivan Vanko getting his project to take revenge on Tony Stark ready. The whole sequence with Vanko building his reactor and whips for his own "suit" is absolutely well put, while on the first movie we had a start with Tony Stark getting attacked by terrorists and then the movie going back right at the beginning of the story, this time, we get to see the born of a villain. Both the first and the second movie opening sequences works great, but in
Iron Man 2 we get a good character development with the villain, and the story already sets off by here.
We then have Iron Man falling off a plane straight to the Stark Expo, where we then see our main character, Tony Stark, for the first time. While there making his speech about the Expo, we already see that the character is still the same egocentric person we knew from the first movie and that nothing much changed with him. Still at the event, we learn that Stark is dying of a slowly palladium poisoning, and this event will set on how the character deals with everything on the story.
In the first movie we had a great character development in each character, from Tony to his antagonist Obadiah Stane, here on the second movie is not different, we get to see what Tony Stark has done to the world and what is happening in his life at the moment. By seeing the news report on Vanko's house, we can see that Iron Man is now helping to maintain the world's peace. Not to forget that while Tony has to deal with palladium he is also dealing with his own legacy and father issues.
Another problem in Tony's life that will set the main events of the movie is the government making pressure on him, so he turn over the "Iron Man Weapon" to the them. Coming along this, we get to see Sam Rockwell for the first time as the other villain of the story, Justin Hammer and also, we get our first look on Don Cheadle as James "Rhodey" Rhodes. The movie sets up a younger and cheesy Hammer, who also happens to be a wisecracker. Rockwell impersonates an impressive acting work as Hammer, of course the character may get annoying at some points, but he gets the job done and pretty much efficient. Cheadle replaces Terrence Howard as Rhodey in this movie, while there is no much difference from the acting, there is a bit of improvement when you see how the actor interacts with the movie, but he can be a pretty boring character eventually.
The highlight of the movie is War Machine, who is well introduced on the movie as the one who will command "The Hammer Drones". He is introduced right at the end of the movie, really fast, but doesn't get to be an unnecessary addition. Pretty amazing action scene with him and Iron Man fighting side by side.
Now most of the people who watch the movie says the problem with it is Tony Birthday party, yes the party gets to be a little idiotic to the movie, a drunk Tony Stark wearing an Iron Man suit and throwing stuff away does sound ridiculous, but that whole scene is needed so we can get more development at what's gonna happen with Tony and Rhodey relationship, which eventually set up the events for the rest of the movie.
To finish this review, I have to comment Mickey Rourke and Scarlett Johansson acting on the movie. Rourke delivers a mysterious and fun character, which has his best moments at the Monaco attack(by far the most well done scene in the whole movie), and in his conversations with Stark. When Vanko says to Tony: "If you could make God bleed, people would cease to believe in him", we see that we are dealing with a villain that is not there just to fight our hero, but one that has a true purpose: kill Tony Stark, get his revenge, not matter what. Johansson is not the perfect Black Widow of course, but she goes just fine with what she has, being the link with SHIELD at the movie and connecting the movie with another characters, she does it fine after all, that is why her character is in the movie.
Iron Man 2 is not a disappointment, but is also not an excellent movie like its predecessor, but it's a fun and worth watch for any fan, it does great with character development and brings two great villains to the story.