Rating in Stars: **½ (out of ****)
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Leslie Bibb
Director: Jon Favreau
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content)
Running Time: 2:06
Release Date: 05/02/08
The casting coup at the center of Iron Man is the best and only chance the film takes in just more than two hours, and it almost makes the film work. This is a surprisingly insular superhero movie, the first of its own franchise and a stepping stone into a wider one that has now, eight years later, taken over the mainstream film world. The pieces are here for something that could examine both its titular hero and the human who inhabits the suit that (despite the fact that, as the hero points out, it is made of a gold titanium alloy) has inspired the moniker. The problem is that they never quite come together into something that breaks free of the constraints of a familiar origin story that leads to an equally familiar conflict.
But let’s get back to that casting coup. Robert Downey Jr. stars as Tony Stark, the heir to a multimillion-dollar company that shares his surname and produces everything from electronics to weaponry, with the latter being his biggest money-spinner yet. The film opens to the sound of an AC/DC track somewhere near the middle of the story as Tony is escorted to and from an exhibition of a new weapon called the Jericho missile (which is actually many tiny missiles inside a bigger one that self-destructs after its counterparts are engaged), only to be hit by a terrorist cell using his own weapons. As the title slams into place and disappears, we rewind to find him absent from an awards ceremony in his honor, instead playing the casinos.
We get an immediate sense of this man from the opening half-hour, the film’s strongest segment, which presents him as sarcastic to the verge of misanthropic. He isn’t quite unlikable, and therein lies why he is so likable. That is in large part due to Downey, who is smart enough to capture the man’s personality without relegating it to be merely a caricature. It’s a genuinely good performance that, unfortunately, only highlights the weaknesses of what surrounds him. The formula is simple and, as a result, restrictive: We are introduced to a hero, the hero is faced with conflict both internal and external in nature, the external conflict in the form of the hero’s first nemesis takes center stage.
That happens to be Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), the man who created Stark Industries with Tony’s father, and if you think that’s anything remotely close to a spoiler, consider that everything Stane does is to his own (and, superficially, the company’s) interest. He wants Tony locked out, especially when, following Tony’s abduction and near-death experience (He places miniaturized arc reactor in the center of his chest to ward off shrapnel from the attack entering his heart), Tony shuts down the weapons manufacturing part of his company. He also becomes Iron Man, a hot-rod-red-suited metal figure whose use could also be turned into a weapon. This establishes what transpires during the climax.
It also simplifies everything else about Tony’s life–from his struggle not to be an arbiter of weaponry (ironic, as Stane points out, that he created a perfect weapon in response) to his relationships with personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and military liaison James Rhodes (Terrence Howard) to action sequences that have some spark (such as Tony’s retaliation upon the terrorists, which introduces light humor into the mix with ease) but aren’t much more than flights of fancy. Downey is the film’s secret weapon, and he almost elevates Iron Man itself above its rudimentary nature.
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