I'm about to share a deep, dark secret with you that you probably wouldn't expect: I love gun movies. And not, "polite chuckle, I do enjoy a good popcorn movie ironically." More like my eyes light up like Christmas morning. It might be vulgar, but it wouldn't be off to say I have a total boner for gun-happy movies, which is why I dug the first Iron Man.
Now Iron Man has never been one of my favorite comic book characters, but what with 90% of the comic movies getting my favorites totally wrong, it kind of makes sense that I can get into a movie I'm not too emotionally vested in. For the uninitiated, Iron Man is a really cool giant robot gun that fights bad guys,whose real identity is a boozing conservative playboy CEO of a weapons company. That's it. No moralistic Alan Moore bullshit about it. Any touchy feely life lessons like "the end result of global business can have dire consequences" or "respect other cultures" are out the window and replaced with explosions and AC/DC songs.
If you're still reading this, then congrats, you might just enjoy this movie. This time around, Tony Stark is hosting a year long tech orgy called Stark Expo, which is a combination of TED, Mac World, and Epcot. Meanwhile in Russia, Ivan Vanko, the son of a man that worked with Old Man Stark to create the arc react used to power the suit - who co-create the process that Mr. Stark took credit for yet still somehow ended up the villain? - is holding a grudge and creates his own more bad-ass version of the Iron Man suit with electrospark whips for hands. Stark business rival Justin Hammer realizes Vanko and he have a common enemy and offers his tech for Vanko's mind to run Tony Stark out of business. Vanko, newly dubbed Whiplash, has other plans in mind.
So there's actually a plot in the midst of the exploding Grand Prix cars and nerd references. There are some great moments of Tony Stark sinking into depression when faced with his own mortality and daddy issues, something that doesn't normally hack it in Hulktown.
If gun-candy isn't your thing, then this movie is packed full of eye-candy. Robert DJ isn't really my type of good looking (though my mother-in-law was pretty swoony over him), but Don Cheadle looks pretty tasty in a uniform, and Sam Rockwell is strangely attractive as the nerdy one-part-Ben-Folds-one-part-Bob-Odenkirk Justin Hammer. And sweet jeezy, ScarJo in a leather cat suit... I think that needs no further elaboration. There's someone for everyone. Or, if you're a greedy bitch like me, everyone for someone.
I fully realize that this might just be the most vapid review I've written. I think that deserves balloons and cake. At this point, I'm just going to avoid rating it all together on a ten-point system, because I know that while my life was not enlightened by this movie by any stretch of the imagination, I'm going to buy it and watch it on a regular basis, mostly while drunk and/or sick. I can wax poetic about the French New Wave and try to hide it, but at the end of the day, I'm going to reach for the movie with guns and girls. And really, isn't that what Truffaut would've wanted?
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