Entertaining... But I want more than that

Rating: 6/10 (7 May 2008)

Okay I'm not going to bash iron man too much but I have to be honest about how this movie is nothing more than just another modern day action movie and nothing really great. I have to start out by saying that I'm not a hardcore Iron Man fan so there might have been things in the movie that only the big fans understood and if that's the case then I suppose this would be a pretty good movie for you, but I'm coming from the average audience point of view. I love movies. I've watched movies all the way from Metropolis, to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, to The Godfather, to Taxi Driver, to Reservoir Dogs and so on. I feel like Iron Man could have been so different. Like it could have been so much more grittier. Like right from the beginning of the film I saw what they were going for when they introduced Tony Stark in the movie. They were going for the "Good but at the same time an anti-hero" type character. I just don't feel like they pulled it off realistically. Like there were parts in the movie where I really didn't understand what he was suppose to be. I mean there were parts where he was acting like such a wuss. Why? Watch The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Pay attention to how Clint Eastwood never breaks character and always has the gritty yet good personality throughout the whole movie. That's what I expected. I expected him to have that complete bad ass personality the whole way through. Now don't get me wrong. There were parts in the movie that were really cool. Like the part where he crashes into the ground after being shot down, then gets back up in the coolest way, then shoots the little rocket at the tank and walks away like such a bad ass as the tank explodes. In fact that was my favorite part of the whole movie. Now, this is all I'm saying right here... WHY? Why could't the whole movie have looked like that one part and give you the feel that that one part gave you. That feeling that made you think "Now this is Iron Man! This is past what I expected. This is as cool as it gets." I mean did you notice that the rest of the movie didn't look anything like that one specific part of the movie? I did. I was waiting for another scene that had the smooth cool action and camera shots that that one part had but it just didn't happen. Some parts where pretty humorous, I'll give it that, it's always nice to have comic relief in an action movie, but there where times in the movie where the jokes just seemed so forced on you. Like you would laugh but it really wasn't that funny. It almost seemed like they were just filling in runtime for the movie with corny jokes and some subtle humor as if they were trying to avoid having a better and smoother storyline. Now overall the movie was actually not that bad but here is the one thing that killed it for me. Even if the movie was next to perfect but it still had this one thing it would have killed it for me. This movie had the worst use of Terrence Howard! Why was he so gay? I remember specifically seeing him being introduced in the movie and right away I thought "Oh cool! He is an awesome actor! He was good in Crash, he was good in Hustle and Flow and he is probably going to be pretty cool in this movie..." No... he comes into the movie and he sounds like he just got off of the set of Leave it to Beaver. I thought he was Tony Stark's love interest. And who the hell whouldn't have guessed right off the back that Jeff Bridges was going to be the bad guy? The movie makes it so obvious. I mean I'm actually wondering if I should really be putting a spoilers warning on here. Like when you see all those terrorist and he gets out of the limo and that was suppose to be the crazy part where you find out he is the bad guy I was seriously thinking "What? That was the twist? Nobody knew? Was this really a twist?" I mean I guess it was, but nobody seemed to be fooled. The movie was predictable. At just about every part in the movie I could predict what was going to happen in the next few minutes. What I'm saying is this. The movie isn't dark and gritty. It's full of American Cheese. It has that pg 13 feel to it. There are some funny parts. Like you get to see Robert Downey Jr get thrown at a wall insanely hard at various times where he is testing out his suit and every once and a while there will be a good line here and there that will make you laugh. It's worth going to see. But it will probably be one of those movies that you say "Yeah. I saw it. It was cool. But I probably won't jump at the chance to see it again."