IRON MAN is directed by Jon Favreau (Elf, co-writer of Swingers). It stars Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges. Based on the Marvel Comic, the film is primarily produced by Favreau, Avi Arad and Stan Lee.
IRON MAN gets the summer blockbuster season started with a smash. One of the better "origin stories" thus far committed to film, IRON MAN shows us how genius billionaire industrialist Tony Stark makes the transformation from a venal, playboy weapons manufacturer to a committed, crimefighting pacifist--with a kickass, supersonic suit. The key to a movie like this is in how invested we as filmgoers get in the man behind the suit, and Downey gives us a very likeable, but still flawed hero to root for in Stark/Iron Man.
You know going in that Downey will be convincing as a hard-partying playboy who's quick with a quip, but he brings sufficient gravitas and physicality to the superhero part of his role, which for me was the only real concern I had about him in this role. Some of his best scenes come early, after he is captured in Afghanistan by a terrorist cell that wants Stark to build one of his superweapons for them. Stark turns the tables on his captors by building a prototype of what will eventually become his Iron Man suit and quickly the movie is off and running.
Jeff Bridges (coming off as a lower key version of Lex Luthor), plays Stark's second-in-command business partner, Obediah Stain who has ambitions of his own that don't include kowtowing to Stark. Paltrow, in a somewhat surprising supporting role, plays Pepper Pot , Stark's devoted (and somewhat smitten) personal assistant. The role requires way less acting prowess than Paltrow is certainly capable of, but she handles it with aplomb, managing to come off as appealingly sexy and coolly professional at the same time while showing nice chemistry with Downey. Terence Howard is on hand too as Col. Rhodes, one of Stark's best friends and his company's military liaison. It would have been nice to see him with more to do, but that probably lies ahead in one of this movie's inevitable sequels.
Is IRON MAN great? It falls just sort of the high bar set by comic book-type movies like BATMAN (1989) and BATMAN BEGINS as well as SPIDER-MAN 2, X-MEN 2 and the original MATRIX, but I'd say it's better than any of the other superhero movies you've seen (we'll see how THE DARK KNIGHT and HANCOCK measure up later this summer). We don't get a ton of insight into what exactly makes Tony Stark tick (he's an asshole who gets wounded as a result of the weapons he built and sold and then he sees the light and that's about it) and we don't have a singular action set piece quite as memorable as the finale of BATMAN BEGINS or X-MEN 2, but everything in this movie works well enough, the Iron Man suit definitely kicks ass and most importantly, the whole movie is just plain FUN. I just saw it and I'd be willing to see it again. How many movies can a person say that about?
As Tony Stark might say...Peace.
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