Iron Man (***½)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow
Seen: May 7th and 27th 2008
***½ Out of ****
“They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far” - Tony Stark mouths off near the start of Ironman. Shortly hereafter the convoy he travels with in the desert of Afghanistan gets ambushed, and everyone gets very dead, him almost included. He gets kidnapped, and in a very third-world haphazard way, they fix him – by fixing a car battery to an electromagnet on his chest – to keep the shrapnel out of his heart.
The superhero hero has, of late, become a massive boon to the film industry. Gone are the old days of the Batman & Robin’s or the Incredible Hulk’s simply being made to please a few fanboys. The superhero movie has come to stay – because filmmakers seem to have gotten the point, we have prime drama and action material with these movies – and I’m not even mentioning the fact that the storyboards for these films are practically ready made by the writers. Here we are presented with the rich and powerful Tony Stark – weapons mogul to whoever pays – eventually turning into Ironman – the hero who fights those who bought the weapons (and then the money-hungry makers).
How fitting is it not, physically and emotionally, that the electromagnet keeps Stark alive by keeping shrapnel out of his heart, giving us the superhero, a deeply conflicted man owning up to what he’s done in the world, played with easy brilliance by Downey Jr., this generation’s best actor by a country mile. There’s a very subtle will-they won’t-they relationship between Stark and Pepper Potts (Paltrow), his personal assistant, that adds even more to this rich story. The only thing that keeps this movie out of the really big leagues (and it's so trivial that it almost doesn't matter), is the villain. Jeff Bridges plays Obadiah Stane well enough, but there is a slight bit too much familiarity with almost any villain we’ve ever seen, the measured dialogue, the overburdening lust for power, and his ‘alter ego’, Iron Monger – who is simply a bigger Ironman, without the red.
The fights and action sequences and special effects are fantastic, but one villain who turns out to be merely a bigger version of the hero is a bit old. This is well presented and told however, and like I said, a very small disappointment with the film – Downey Jr. fixes it all with a fantastic portrayal of the conflicted hero fighting to stay alive and active. This film is massively entertaining and only hits a very small speed-bump with the final (yet still quite spectacular) battle. That’s why I saw it twice.
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