Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Mickey Rourke, Don Cheadle, Sam Rockwell, Scarlett Johansson, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Director: John Favreau

Screenwriter: Justin Theroux

Cashing in to the tune of $318 million at the US box office and beaten into second place in highest grossing league tables only by Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Iron Man was the surprise hit of 2008. A surprise because: it featured one of Marvel’s less well known superheroes in Tony Stark/Iron Man, the billionaire industrialist who masquerades as a part time robo-armoured vigilante; it starred character actor (with a notorious past) Robert Downey Jr in the titular role; and featured a relatively untested director in the shape of John Favreau. All of these were gambles that paid off for the studio though, in spades. Flash forward two years and with a suped up budget, Shellhead, as he is known to the die-hards, is back for Iron Man II, now with the weight of anticipation resting on his heavily fortified shoulders and it’s a burden he just about carries off.

Bigger, more expensive, with more bang for your buck, more gags to snigger at, and with Downer Jr’s whip-cracking verbal dexterity, which made the original such a refreshing change, pushed to the forefront, Favreau and screenwriter Justin Theroux have taken that which worked first time and dialled it up to eleven. Even rock behemoths AC/DC, who featured on the soundtrack first time out, have been given their own greatest hits/OST package now too. It’s indulgent in all the right ways, it’s funny, entertaining, with enough explosions to sate, yet indulgent in many adverse ways too.

While the action has been bumped up a pay grade (a Monaco-set sequence is a visual treat), and the gags come thicker and faster than before, there is simply too much going on in Iron Man II. With his superhero status now out in the open, Tony Stark is lavishing in his new found celebrity status, indulging in all the delights, sometimes carnal, that this brings. Yet as any A-lister will tell you, fame brings with it certain trappings, namely those that want to knock you off your pedestal and bring you down a peg or two. For Tony’s sequel, this comes in the shape of: an industrialist competitor (Rockwell’s Justin Hammer) who is keen to make a mark with his own Iron Man suit; angry Russian Ivan Vanko (Rourke), who’s every bit as handy with a tool kit and out for revenge for wrongs visited upon his father by Stark Sr; and then there’s the small matter of the US Supreme Court who want Stark’s ‘weapon’ handed over to the authorities.

Facing off against the evildoers, Stark has new-found allies in the shape of Colonel Rhodes (a mockney accent-less Cheadle), Nick Fury (Snake-Plissken-ed Sam Jackson) and Stark industries assistant Nathalie Rushman (Johansson) ,who is far from the bespectacled pencil pusher she initially seems. But the ensemble nature results in a narrative that is cluttered and rushed, with none of the new additions allowed any real room to breathe or assert themselves. The tone too becomes, in places, a little too self-satisfied and smug. Theroux’s script never takes itself, or its characters, too seriously (an inebriated Stark party scene is the chief culprit here) which undermines both the film’s brief attempts at underscoring Starks story with a degree of emotion and the film some global thematic resonance (do home-grown weapons protect or provoke?)

Still, as blockbusters go it is a smartly executed piece of entertainment, with Downey Jr exceling in a role it is now nigh on impossible to imagine anyone else stepping into. It also keeps the Marvel bandwagon on course for the much-anticipated Avengers tag team film they have planned for later on down the line.

By Alasdair Morton

Iron Man 2 is out now courtesy of Paramount.