World Peace Secured? Summer has Arrived.

'Iron Man 2'

Review: 4/5

Although it may appear to be a cheap, candy-coated excuse for ludicrous action sequences (many of them either overly long, or unusually short), director Jon Favreau's 'Iron Man 2' bypasses the narrative purgatory many movie sequels unfortunately find themselves stuck in. Picking up exactly where the original left off, the indelibly narcissistic playboy Tony Stark gloats endlessly (and hilariously) through the film's first act, ranting and defending his newfound legacy as a worldwide savior and sole securer of world peace. The problem? He owns the 'Iron Man' technology, and is unwilling to relinquish it to the hands of the American government (take a few shots of Patron, a sip of champagne, and cue a rich bad guy, a vengeful Russian physicist, Stark's rising blood toxicity, and the cryptic S.H.I.E.L.D. clique, and you've got yourself an exciting, psychologically complex story). Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson wears an eye-patch.

Battling both praise and accusations with vanity and egotism, Robert Downey Jr.'s 'Tony Stark' is, this time, more of an unrelenting nuisance than he was in the original (this is a good thing). Yet this veneer is used not merely for spectators' entertainment, but to mask the hero's emotional and ethical crises, which writer Justin Theroux details with equally distributed doses of compassion and crippling honesty. Stark, who can spout sarcastic one-liners with ease, is far too afraid to confront an ominous childhood and a possible quasi-philanthropic future.

Without giving away the film's major plot developments, suffice it to say newly reinvented actor Mickey Rourke (a Russian physicist and man of few words in this film) won't be leaving the silver screen for a good while. Sam Rockwell is awesome, as, well, Sam Rockwell. Leave the rest to Downey's 'Stark,' and Favreau's favoring story over style.

Despite the film's 'sequel' status, 'Iron Man 2' appears to emphasize all the trappings of a new-age 'hero' saga.