CAST IRONY
“IRON MAN”
Directed by Jon Favreau, Written by Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum &
Matt Holloway, Based on the Marvel Comics character
Stars: Robert Downey, Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, and Gwyneth Paltrow
Rated PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content.
126 minutes.

As far as superheroes go, Tony Stark as Iron Man may not have the adolescent angst of Peter Parker’s Spiderman, the existential conflicts of Bruce Wayne’s Batman, the inner turmoil of Bruce Banner’s Hulk, or the vast mutant weaponry of the various X-Men characters. But Iron Man does have one very vital weapon in its arsenal: Robert Downey, Jr.  With his quick wit, ironic attitude, and immensely likable screen persona, he makes Iron Man really soar. 

At the outset, we meet Stark who deals in weapons and women with equal aplomb.  A genius and a playboy with his own high-tech manufacturing plant, Stark is a shameless and selfish man of the moment; he barely has time to acknowledge his faithful assistant’s birthday (Gwyneth Paltrow as “Pepper” Potts).  And even worse, Stark never once thinks about the repercussions of his career choice; soon, Tony will get his own stark reminder in an ironic version of blowback.

While overseas selling his latest war technology, Stark and his convoy are ambushed; the unit is killed but Stark survives, though barely. He’s taken prisoner and is forced to build his latest, greatest, and deadliest weapon for his captors using their own stock of Stark’s weapons. Along with a fellow prisoner Yinsen (Shaun Toub) assisting him, Stark instead builds a self-defensive robot, a prototype of Iron Man that he uses against his captors to escape certain death.

Back on his home turf, Stark reveals his crisis of conscience to his business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, going bald); he wants to know how their weapons ended up in the hands of terrorists who used them against American soldiers.  At a press conference, Stark tells the world that he no longer will make advanced weaponry, much to the great chagrin of Stane and Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard), Stark’s best friend and military contact.

Stark retreats back to his cliffside home (complete with a super-sophisticated basement lab) and begins to refine Iron Man’s original design.  After a few false starts and take-offs, Stark perfects Iron Man enough to use it as a one-man World Police unit.   As Stark becomes more of Iron Man, we realize it took literally an artificial heart for Stark to become more of a human being.  He lightens and opens up more towards Pepper. However, the nefarious Stane is looking for a way to keep Stark from pursuing his new career path; he’ll stop at nothing to steal and perfect his own Iron Man design and use it against his partner. 

Director Jon Favreau won’t be mistaken for James Cameron in the action department, but that’s okay since most of the action is limited to just a few sequences. Instead, Favreau and his quad of writers (including Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby who wrote Children of Men) focus on the characters and their relationships to each other.  This is refreshing for a superhero movie and is unfortunately an exception more than the rule (though Spiderman 2 was the last great exception).  Iron Man is Transformers with a brain.

As for the cast, Bridges seems to relish playing a villain and Paltrow hasn’t been this good in nearly a decade. Though I must confess I’ve never been a big fan of hers, she won me over with her chemistry with Downey. Clark Gregg makes his role as Agent Phil Coulson ambiguous enough to intrigue, but Terrence Howard’s role is underwritten; he comes off as a generic best friend and seems bored with the role.

But thankfully, Iron Man is all about Robert Downey, Jr.  There’s no mystery behind his vast talent; he’s always been an excellent actor if given the right material (He made a great impression last year in Zodiac as the burnt-out paranoid reporter Paul Avery). Here, despite being somewhat handicapped by a familiar genre, Downey is able to inject much-needed layers into his Tony Stark character. Though it’s not easy to make a superhero seem human, Downey makes it seem effortless.  His seductive scenes with Paltrow, in particular, sparkle and he knows how to seduce an audience, too.  Despite his myriad history of past problems, Downey is someone you want to root for…as an actor and as a human being.  Great talents like his are rare; almost as rare as Superhero movies for adults.