Iron Man

Rating: 8/10 (17 May 2008)

Iron Man is a live action version of the comic book series featuring characters created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. The film focuses on a rich weapons manufacturer named Tony Stark, who while on a business trip to Afghanistan, is kidnapped and forced to work on illegal weapons. With the help of a doctor who was also held captive, Tony eventually creatures a robotic body filled with different defence techniques and weapons, which he uses to escape and get back to America. Now back in America, and surviving a near fatal experience Tony, puts away his wild lifestyle and focuses on getting rid of weapons and making the world a safer place. Eventually, Tony has to put on the robotic suit once again to fight an evil co-worker and protect the city and world from weapons and evil. Lots of action and a build up to a probable sequel follow. Normally superhero action films aren't usually the kind of film that I pay much attention to, but within the last little while there have been some above average superhero films made and Iron Man, joins the team of successful ones. The film works on a large part because of Robert Downey Jr's top notch performance where at once he plays an arrogant and spoiled playboy to becoming a good hearted protector of things gone bad, so either way his snappy performance pulls it off quite well like it does in most of the films he stars in. The script the filmmakers have to work with is fairly intelligent and combines a look at the different characters in the film and much to my liking focuses more on them and has quite a good build up before it gets into action and special effects. More time is spent with the characters and how Tony, becomes Iron Man, and I much preferred this to a non stop special effects extravaganza. Even when there is action scenes they do the job of entertaining and don't go overboard by being too long, or too overblown by special effects, so that worked for me as well. While, I didn't think the supporting performances were quite as good as Downey's performance, they still held their own and for a film like this Oscar calibre performances aren't totally necessary even though what Downey pulls off is gold. I liked the pace of the film and thought it moved along quite well and for a film of this type I think the writers and filmmakers did a pretty good job of making something that could be loud, tedious and non stop with special effects into a more compelling and human story that combines the typical superhero movie elements, but does it well due to good timing, writing and direction. A good entry into this summer's movie schedule and an overall pleasant surprise.