Iron Man - He's Not Rusty!
Written: May 15 '08 (Updated Feb 24 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Lots of action and humour, Robert Downey Jr. is superb...
Cons: ... struggles for plot credibility most of the way through...
The Bottom Line: Iron Man is proof that Marvel's decision to make movies themselves was a good one.
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| captaind's Full Review: Iron Man |
Iron Man is a superhero movie that delivers a lot of action and quite a lot of laughs to boot. It stars Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Start, a wealthy industrialist who has made his fortune running the arms business he inherited from his father (Stark Industries). He is soon to find though that not all of his weapons end up in the hands of worthy, sensible, honest people (considering this means the US government, I guess a lot would disagree with him there) - terrorist groups and the like are using Stark Industries weaponry. One piece of new kit has in particular caught the attention of some undesirables - the “Jericho”, a very powerful multiple missile delivery package. Stark soon finds himself as their hostage and forced to face the reality of what the weapons his own company produce are being used for. I think it’s not revealing too much to say that in escaping, he designs the prototype of what will become the Iron Man armour…
Back home with his newly developed conscience, he finds himself rather unpopular with the board of directors at Stark Industries. Keeping himself busy on his new pet project, he holes himself up with only faithful PA “Pepper Potts” (Gwyneth Paltrow) for company, with occasional visits from outside. Then reports stark coming in of military action in a distant country from someone who looks very familiar to Tony… and those weapons look familiar too… so, he decides to do something about it.
Robert Downey Jr. is truly excellent as Tony Stark. He excels in the role, revelling in the character’s vices (he’s a blatant womaniser and an alcoholic, though the latter is only subtly hinted at in the movie itself) and wicked sense of humour. This is no squeaky clean Superman type hero - he’s fully loaded with sin, but slowly learning to let his conscience be his guide. The humour comes from other sources too, particularly in his development of the final model of the Iron Man outfit - which is a good thing, as the laughter factor gets the film over some of its weaknesses. The special effects are absolutely superb, too, with flawless action sequences adding a great deal of excitement to the film. Gwyneth Paltrow is both gorgeous and effectively mysterious as the oddly named Miss Potts - and that description is coming from someone who doesn’t like her generally! The completely unresolved possible romance between Stark and Potts is quite refreshing, and possibly part of the fact that with Marvel taking over full creative control of the movie development of one of their characters for the first time, a much wider story arc is envisaged and things don’t need to be resolved in a single film. There certainly is plenty of scope for Iron Man’s character to be developed further in future films, especially when the various superheroes of the “Ultimate Avengers” team get together.
Jeff Bridges is very bald and rather menacing as Obadiah Stone, who built up the company with Mr Stark Sr. and currently running the company with Tony. He doesn’t have the technical ability of Mr Stark Jr., but he’s good at PR and very, very sneaky. He seems completely unencumbered by a feeling of morality or responsibility for the deaths caused by Stark Industries’ weapons. Terrence Howard plays Tony’s friend Jim Rhodes, himself in the military, and a host of people you’ve probably never heard of play Arabic-looking terrorists and suchlike. I take it Marvel weren’t going for political correctness here. The plot is in some ways the weakest aspect of the film - throughout the opening scenes the whole credibility aspect struggles and at certain points different characters just suddenly become very stupid for no apparent reason. However there’s enough action and humour for you to just disengage your brain and go with the flow; suspending your belief isn’t too difficult when you’re being entertained as much as you will be here.
The music (Ramin Djawadi) was at times unconventional and a little strange perhaps, but always good and the unexplainably quirky style suited the movie perfectly. Overall I really enjoyed it, though I didn’t exactly love it. Unusually, fans of the original comics actually seem to like the movie even more than the rest of us. Marvel making the films themselves instead of getting someone else to do it certainly seems to have paid off with Iron Man time will tell whether it continues to be a successful idea. Director Jon Favreau has done a hell of a job here though; let’s hope he directs one of the future Marvel superhero movies.
Quotes
Tony Stark: Give me a Scotch. I'm starving.
(I hadn’t remembered that line to be honest… maybe the fact that he was an alcoholic wasn’t quite as subtly suggested as I thought!)
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Tony Stark: My old man had a philosophy. Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.
Christine Everheart: That's a great line, coming from a guy selling the sticks.
Tony Stark: My father helped defeat Nazis. He worked on the Manhattan Project. A lot of people, including your professors at Brown, would call that being a hero.
Christine Everheart: And a lot of people would also call that war-profiteering.
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Christine Everheart: Have you ever lost an hour of sleep your whole life?
Tony Stark: I'd be prepared to lose a few with you.
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Tony Stark: Why are you trying to hustle me out of here?
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts: Your flight was scheduled to leave an hour and a half ago.
Tony Stark: That's funny. I thought with it being my plane and all, that it would just wait for me to get there. I mean, doesn't it kind of defeat the purpose of having your own plane if it departs before you arrive?
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Agent Phil Coulson: I'm Agent Phil Coulson with the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.
Virginia 'Pepper' Potts: That's quite a mouthful.
Agent Phil Coulson: I know. We're working on it.
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Tony Stark: They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only need to fire once. That's how dad did it, that's how America does it, and it's worked out pretty well so far.
(Yes, there’s even some political humour / commentary in Iron Man!)
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Iron Man is rated 12A (UK) PG-13 (US) for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content.
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For some reason I kept finding similarities between this and another Jeff Bridges film, TRON
A couple of movies from Robert Downey Jr.‘s younger days Chances Are and Only You - just how long before we have to start calling him Robert Downey Sr.?!?
I will need to update my Top Ten Superhero Movies to accommodate Iron Man…
This was an entry to ElvisDo's "Funny Pages" write off, to do with all things comic book and related. Click here for more details.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
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