Shortly after Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) revealed himself to the world that he is in fact the mechanized superhero, Iron Man, he has started to get into more and more trouble as he’s put in the spotlight.  The U.S. Government is hounding him to hand over the suit to them so that they can control the use of the technology.  Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), an industry competitor, is trying to do his best to discover the secret to the Stark technology so he can create his own.  Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) is the son of the man who helped Howard Stark (John Slattery) create the arc reactor technology, that powers the Iron Man suit, is seeking revenge against the Stark name for what they did to his family.  So Mr. Stark has a lot going for him thesedays.

Two years ago we were given the first film of this, soon to be massive, franchise based on the famous Marvel comic book.   I reviewed the film back then and gave it an unbelievable 9.0/10, however with a retrospective eye I probably would downgrade that review to a 7.5/10 (after rewatching the first film a dozen times and realizing how insanely horrid the third act of the film is).  To say that this film was an improvement on the original would be an understatement.  The greatest problem with the prior film was how quickly the filmmaker, Jon Favreau, realized at approximately the ninety-minute mark that he had twenty or so minutes of movie left and hadn’t created a proper villain.  Here however, we have a proper progression of antagonists (as you can see above there are a lot of them this time) and unlike the flopped Spider-man 3 which had the trouble of juggling way too many issues and people for Peter Parker to battle here it’s dealt with in a way that you never stop and ask yourself “what happened to that dude?”.

I think my favourite thing about this movie has to be Sam Rockwell.  Fresh off of his indie hit last year, Moon, he returns to block busting the box office as the weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer.  His need to be noticed as much as Tony Stark is makes me laugh constantly.  He’s losing the arms race to Mr. Stark even though the tech that Stark invented, the Iron Man suit, isn’t even on the market.

It’s also great to be seeing the progression of characters from the first film: Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and Lt. Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) was more than fun, it was enjoyable drama between them and Tony.  If you can’t understand how awesome it is that we’ve finally gotten War Machine as Iron Man’s sidekick then you probably don’t deserve to like this movie.  When we get to the final fight scene between Iron Man, War Machine and Whiplash the movie surpasses all expectations and delivers us something truly special.

If you saw the first movie and thought to yourself that mechs vs. mechs was a good idea for an action film then this movie is for you.  It probably won’t be my favourite film of 2010 or of the summer but it has action galore and even more charisma than the first with Sam Rockwell added to the cast which I love to see.  I’m definitely going to see it again before the end of the week.

IMDB says 7.7/10

Rotten Tomatoes says 71%

I say 8.5/10