Iron Man
I’m not so much into the comic book movies. Outside of Superman and Batman, my experience is limited and my interest less. I have never seen or read any work based on Iron Man until this one, so I cannot speak to its fidelity to the canon. I do see a crapload of movies, however, comic book and otherwise, and Iron Man is a good movie.
Director Jon Favreau has had his ups (Elf, Made) and downs (Zathura). Iron Man is a definite up. It’s paced like an adult movie, and doesn’t pander or insult or annoy or hyper-react or anything like that. It is still a sci-fi comic book movie, so yes, you suspend your disbelief at a few things, without which Iron Man would not exist. Even those things were handled with grown-up gloves, giving us enough future science to go “OK, I accept that” and enough vagueness that we can fill in the magic. The pace is good, not frantic, not “oh god we have to get to the explosions or we’re gonna lose them” – and the actors are all above average at least. (Our leads are no strangers to the Oscar nomination process.)
Of course, you have to start with Robert Downey, Jr. He trades “greatest actor of his generation” accolades with Johnny Depp. His checkered past and irrepressible wit form a solid base for his portrayal of Tony Stark, genius zillionaire and metal fetishist. Downey is hilarious even in scenes by himself, serious and totally committed to his characters abrupt 180, and his scene companions are henceforth dragged into the spotlight of believability by his sheer awesomeness. Stark has to start at a pretty intense place to get to the point where he makes himself a red and gold metal suit, and Downey sells it.
Only at rare moments does the movie devolve into the kind of content that gives comic book movies their bad reputation. Even at these relative low points, the whole affair is so much less embarrassing to the participants than so many other films, I was barely bothered. I refuse to give a free pass just because it’s a genre film, since the rest of the film adheres successfully to higher standards.
Like Batman, Iron Man is a successful businessman with unlimited resources and a dark, burning core. The villain conflict in this film is simultaneously more personal and more global than the Caped Avenger has had on film. Downey’s own dark core is darker than Stark’s, in a way. Stark’s internal agonies seem less profound than Downey’s, though karmically they are much more vast. But Downey’s/Stark’s eyes, they see so much. His odd, chemistry-free chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow’s crisp personal assistant is the only thing that rings really false. It’s more like Favreau wanted to enjoy the awkward tension rather than resolve it one way or another. These two actors just lacked the vibe. She’s all brain and he’s all id, and they seem to be meant to be cast as the opposite.
A nice bonus – the exposition of Stark’s background is played out essentially with a quick celebutainment segment with lots of great magazine covers. The designers of that sequence peg the zeitgeist of those kinds of fawning/demonizing articles and their respective publications’ provocative styles. They also feed us pretty much what we noobs need to know to understand the world we’re entering. Oh and then too, there is comedy sprinkled throughout, actually comedy, not Transformers hiding in the back yard comedy. Iron Man is an enjoyable film that is better than you might expect.
MPAA Rating PG_13
Release date 5/2/08
Time in minutes 126
Director Jon Favreau
Studio Paramount Pictures
