Tries very hard, but fails to come off as truly memorable

Rating: 4/10 (12 May 2008)

STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is one of the world's most renowned arms manufacturers/sellers, who is able to live a funky, eccentric lifestyle on the back of the success of his Stark Industries company. But this all changes when he goes to Afghanistan to show off his latest weapon and is taken hostage by terrorists and forced to build a weapon for them. Instead, he builds a super-hero suit and uses it to break free and go back to America, where he reveals a change of heart in relation to his profession and tries to aim his talents more at peace than war. But this doesn't go down well with his boss Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), who's only worried about the profits they will lose now Tony no longer wants to make weapons. And when Tony learns that his company has been making under-handed deals with the men who held him captive, he uses the super-hero suit he made once again and becomes Iron Man. But his corrupt boss has ideas of his own in regards making his own super-hero suit...
You can always count on a good super-hero film to fill in the obligatory summer blockbuster slot in the filmic year, and this year we have this adaptation of one of Marvel Comic's truly lesser known creations, which just shows how far towards the bottom of the barrel we're scraping. An ambitious piece that seems to have caught onto the trend of making extra long summer blockbusters, this tries to invest a lot of unnecessary depth and characterization into a story that's ultimately not worth the effort.
It just feels overlong instead of something really special. Okay, Iron Man isn't your typical action hero. He doesn't just magically get his super powers like Superman or Spider-Man, we see him struggle to get his super-suit to work, failing to guide it properly and make the special gadgets work, but the whole piece just feels overly labourious, with an uninvolving, predictable script that fails to rise out the ground.
Cast wise, in the lead role, Downey Jr. is an odd but admittently effective choice, a snazzy, cynical anti hero who slowly sees through his own BS but he's just not enough to keep the whole boat afloat. Bridges is also a decent choice as the villain, but the weak script fails to make the most out of him, while in support rising star Terrence Howard goes through the motions as a comic relief Air Force colonel and Gwyneth Paltrow is noticeable as a personal assistant with a ridiculous name.
All these type of films just seem so manufactured nowadays, with so much back story stretching them out so long and enough publicity to guarantee a great opening weekend and an obligatory equally inferior sequel a year or so later. For all it's quantity instead of quality, Iron Man truly has an Iron Soul. **