Iron Man
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 2 hours, 6 minutes
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Starring:
Robert Downey Jr. - Tony Stark / Iron Man
Terrence Howard - Jim Rhodes
Jeff Bridges - Obadiah Stone
Gwyneth Paltrow - Pepper Potts
Is Iron Man the best debut superhero movie to date? It's debatable but it's certainly a debate worth having. Jon Favreau's story of the war-profiteer-cum-super-hero certainly has a strong case when you consider its excellent cast, sharp writing, and special effects that break the laws of physics and awesomeness.
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is Bruce Wayne without the baggage. He's a carefree playboy who was born into wealth but with a gift for engineering. While he takes a cavalier attitude towards his morally murky business, Stark is charismatic and hard to hate. But while in Afghanistan selling his newest weapon, his convoy is ambushed by insurgents using, what else, weapons from Stark Industries. Tony gets some Stark Industries shrapnel in his chest but doesn't die thanks to a fellow engineer/captive and an electromagnet powered by a car battery. Unfortunately, the bad guys want Mr. Stark alive so he can build them their own weapon of mass destruction.
This is the film's most ridiculous bit of narrative. The bad guys bring Stark weapons, tools, and everything he requests under the pretense that he'll build them a WMD. Apparently no baddie ever thinks, "Hmmm…should we really trust the genius inventor to use these tools to help us or to fashion his own escape…Nah! I'm sure all will be well!" Say what you will about insurgents but they are an optimistic bunch.
Unfortunately, that optimism is their undoing as Stark builds a suit of armor and busts his way out of captivity and back to freedom but with a new purpose of using his talent to protect the people he put in harm's way—a new business plan that's much to the consternation of Stark's business partner and obvious big bad, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).
Favreau has done something very clever with Iron Man. It's not just that he perfectly cast Downey Jr. as Stark or had strong supporting characters with Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) and Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). It's that he understood that Tony Stark is a superhero because he does have a superpower and it has nothing to do with his gold-titanium alloy suit. Tony Stark's special ability is technological brilliance. He can engineer just about anything and the scenes of Tony building the suit are as memorable as the amazing fight scenes. The ending battle is a bit anti-climatic compared to set pieces earlier in the film, but it's still a strong finish, especially in how they choose to close out the film.
Rather than try to cram all of Iron Man's mythology into one film, from Tony Stark's alcoholism to his battles with The Mandarin, Favreau clearly understood this as an origin film and with that as his blueprint, he created an explosive start to the Summer movie season. You can argue about how this film may stack up against Spider-Man or Batman Begins, but there's no arguing that Iron Man rocks as hard the eponymous song.
Words by
Matt Goldberg
5.1.08