Thursday, May 1, 2008

Movie review: Iron Man

"The Dude" as a bald villain? Say it ain't so!

By John P. Meyer

Iron Man

Billionaire industrialist and genius inventor Tony Stark is kidnapped and forced to build a devastating weapon. Instead, using his intelligence and ingenuity, Tony builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes captivity. When he uncovers a nefarious plot with global implications, he dons his powerful armor and vows to protect the world as Iron Man.

Source: Cinema Source

• Showtimes and more on Iron Man

With Iron Man, the multi-talented Jon Favreau gets a chance to try his hand at big-budget Marvel universe super-hero fare, and - hooray! - his hand fits that gauntlet as if it were a heavy metal Playtex Living Glove.

In casting bad boy Hollywood actor Robert Downey, Jr. as bad boy genius inventor Tony Stark, the creative team has delivered up a narrative plum: Mr. Downey wise-cracks his egocentric way through the proceedings as if the comic book-to-screen role had been written for him. (Stan? Mark? Any comments?)

It's hard to be humble when you're Shiva - Destroyer of Worlds

Events open in the hot zone of war-torn Afghanistan (with California's Owens Valley standing in), where billionaire weapons-designer Stark is being shuttled to a military base after conducting a Shiva-worthy demonstration of his latest multiple independently targeted rocket-launched munition, dubbed Jericho. Stark's enjoying a scotch-rocks in the back seat of his "Fun Vee" while body-armored and heavily-armed soldiers gaze at him in something like awe - he's a rock star to these guys (and gals) for several reasons, not the least being the fact that he's a renowned playboy. ("Is it true you went 12-for-12 on FHM's hottest babes of the year?", inquires one worshipful grunt.) Not to mention that his corporation is responsible for producing all the coolest and deadliest weapons in their at-hand war-on-terror arsenal.

Yes, Tony's riding high - he's the Howard Hughes hipster of the contemporary Military Industrial Complex - until he meets a shaped charge munititon with his Fun-Vee's name on it.

In a somewhat difficult to swallow second act ("it's only a comic book, it's only a comic book..."), Tony finds himself the captive of a band of antagonist irregulars bent on ramping up the in-theater mayhem via his weapons-design expertise. And so they give him and his designated assistant, Yinsen (Shaun Toub), the run of the cave-based and remarkably well-appointed workshop.

* NOTE to antagonist irregulars: Never give a weapons-savvy inventor genius the run of the cave-based workshop.

Sensible footwear be damned: Gwyneth shines in heels

Suffice it to say that Tony's crude-but-effective prototype Iron Man getup works sufficiently well for him to segue, alive and well, to Act Three, in which we meet both his lovely and capable assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, fine as a desirable but aloof red-haired, high-heeled girl Friday) and his war-mongering and proud of it business associate, Obabiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, sporting shaven pate and goatee).

In these middle stages of the story Tony is seen tinkering away in his private lab on improvements to his suit of flying armor; he's like a latter-day Tesla with computer powered holographic imaging, creating designs and modifying them in 3-D for the benefit of our amazement (and amusement). When the designs are fabricated and tested, we indeed find ourselves amazed, as the Industrial Light & Magic folks have outdone themselves on all this neat (virtual) gadgetry. From the color-coordination of the body plating to the force-magnifiers powering Iron Man's movements and flight controls to the glowing core inserted cringingly into Tony Stark's drainpipe chest cavity, it all looks really real: no suspension of disbelief required.

"I'm SING... in' in the lab. Just sing... in' in the lab!"

What adds the cherry to this hot palladium sundae are the stupid super-human tricks Tony gets up to during component testing. When he tries his thrusters at "only" ten percent power, an intimate face-first encounter with the laboratory wall ensues. Further slap-happiness results during flight control testing, when Pepper gets involved in the explosive shenanigans.

Tony orders around his employees - both human and robotic - with good-natured egalitarian disdain. Improbably, one of the film's most memorable characters ends up being an artificially intelligent articulated assembly arm charged with wielding a fire extinguisher during Tony's shakedown runs. Let's just say he gets "extinguished" on couple of memorable occasions.

The backstory to all this armored flying suit development stuff is that Tony has undergone a world-view sea change during his captivity, resulting in a determination to dismantle the weapon-related output of his corporation. Which leaves his stockholders somewhat concerned, since the lion's share of Stark, Inc.'s output has to this point been war materiel.

Downey buffed up for the role. As did his robotic one-armed assistant.

Charging to the rescue with a Segway and a cigar is Obadiah, champion of corporate profits and defender of the free enterprise right to be wealthy beyond all reason - and to Hell with the seeds of human suffering sown in his profiteering wake. (O.K., O.K., corporate execs are almost as evil as politicians - we get it, already.) It should come as no surprise to anyone when Obadiah is shown to be selling weapons to factions on all sides of the War On Terror front.

What makes this movie soar are the seamless action sequences in which Iron Man flies, evades, malfunctions, crashes, hurls energy bolts at evil-doers and generally behaves like a comic book super hero is supposed to. What will catapult it into the pre-Summer blockbuster stratosphere are the deft humorous touches embedded amongst this death-defying stuff. For instance: while Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes is trying to identify the mysterious missile-like object that suddenly appears over the war zone under his F-15-protected umbrella, a ring tone suddenly goes off inside Tony/Iron Man's carapace. Leading to a quite amusing conversation between field commander and the unidentified flying object itself.

Leslie Bibb makes a brief (and briefly attired) appearance as a Vanity Fair reporter named Christine Everhart who's out to nail a pre-Iron Man Stark for the merchant of death that he is; while our old friend (and Iron Man creator) Stan Lee gets a cameo as another famous white-haired older gent.

Sure, the characters (aside from Tony Stark's, which exhibits surprising depth) are less than three-dimensional, but - after all - film's a two-dimensional medium. Iron Man can hold his head up high alongside other outstanding genre entries. Supe - Spidey - Batman: make room at the table. (And you might want to reinfoce the chairs.)

Related stories

• Movie review: Sex and the City (May 29, 2008)
• Pegasus News Week in View: Mayday Edition (May 1, 2008)

See more stories in:

• Arts > Movies / Film > Mainstream Movies

Comments

Brad LaRock Staff

Great movie. Downey was great. I am always skeptical of Superhero movies, but Downey did have depth, it was well written and produced. Some not so call-able twists and turns made it interesting. Saw the movie at the new Studio Movie Grill on Royal and Central. Great sound system. Rattled my pizza.

2 months, 3 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )