Good graphics; brilliant script;

Rating: 7/10 (9 May 2008)

I'm not a Marvel comics reader and so, not that qualified to assess this "superhero" portrayal from comics onto the big screen which real Iron Man fans can do much better. However, I found this movie very entertaining and if you're into gadget-loving, sci-fi stuff, there's a lot of innovative stuff to learn. Some particular scenes like the deployment of Jericho missiles were a real visual delight. You don't want to miss the "assembly line" for its gadget-gizmo's delights where Tony Stark (a.k.a. the Iron Man, a billionaire arms manufacturer and Master Designer) designs the robot-prototype armor (which is the central theme of this movie). Basically, the armor is a one-man army like never seen before; impenetrable to bullets, missiles and bombs - the armor is a heavy suit made of gold-titanium alloy (there was another one designed in an Afghanistan cave which falls into the hands of Obadiah Stane, Stark's business partner and main villain in the plot). The climax scene where Stark needs to deactivate a gadget called the arc reactor from Stane's chest is not clear in its outcome(it's supposed to be an inexhaustible source of free energy, Palladium-315 being identified as the fuel). Some scenes had loose ends e.g.the journalist called Christine Everhart from Vanity fair, with whom Tony has a one-night stand, her character wasn't developed but is important. Pepper Potts (played by the beautiful Gwyneth Paltrow) is shown as a loyal and dependable secretary who turns out to love her Boss (even though he's womanizing). Robert Downey Jr. was adequate in his performance as the bundle of energy called Tony Stark.
In my opinion, the script did a lot of to-and-fro between Afghanistan and Los Angeles. The focus should have remained on the main villain Obediah Stane but they had to put another bad guy called Raza, a power-hungry terrorist commander operating from Afghanistan. He's given a lot of unnecessary footage as the unsuspecting ally of Stane who ditches him in the end for his own personal power ambitions - all these seemed like loose ends of the plot to me. Moreover, Afghanistan is a war-ravaged country and the Taliban certainly don't have the technology to "reverse engineer" those robot prototype armors and Jericho missiles - it's unnecessary for Hollywood to project Afghans anymore as terrorists and Taliban -let's leave them alone, the poor Afghans have suffered long and hard enough. What they least require is another "labeling" of a terrorist.