Scrap Metal

Rating: 5/10 (31 May 2008)

It's loud, it's lame and after all of the hype should make a trillion dollars as the same ready to mix super hero recipe follows all of the directions in this overcooked CGI spectacular of blowin' things up real good. Updated from its comic book beginnings to our present century of world terror I M villains are the usual suspects of semi-literate hateful Afghans and greedy American capitalists strikingly familiar to the same difficult types encountered by Super,Spider and Bat mans.
Tony Stark, brilliant inventor and mega rich arms dealer goes through a moral conversion after being wounded and captured by Afghan terrorists. Managing to build an armor plated flying suit under the eyes of his moronic captors he escapes to fight another day, this time in a really neat looking metallic model. When Tony wants to do a one eighty with the business his evil partner attempts to thwart him. Who shall win this titanic struggle of good and evil? Who cares. We're here to be visually mesmerized and that we are but only for brief periods and with the same twists and turns crashes and explosions that every mega budgeted fiction fantasy flic offers.
Robert Downey Jr. as the I Man is a brilliant piece of marketing in art imitating life. The one time drug sodden loser like the comic book character has managed to rise Phoenix like from the ashes of a ruined career and parlay it into what looks to be a mega money maker for the next decade. Downey is the right choice but hardly tested as an actor since a super hero's emotional range is very limited (it's the reason villains are so much more interesting)but he does manage to bring a cool hipness to the square super hero model. Jeff Bridges overacts a tad with an evil Daddy Warbucks impression and Gwyneth Paltrow as suffering girl Friday Pepper Potts seems to be in the downward spiral Downey was with the culprit not being drugs but lack of talent.
The special effects are predictably spectacular and there's a heavy metal music score to bludgeon you along the way as the assembly line plot unfolds with less grace than the first Spiderman and even less humor and suspense than Robo-Cop. You seen one you seen 'em all. This is a newer but not improved hybrid model of a crowded field and it is more tin than iron.