Above Its Mediocrities Is a Great Showcase of Robert Downey, Jr. and Jeff Bridges

Rating: 6/10 (15 December 2008)

Like its hero, this $135 million total 12-year-old male's chronic nocturnal emission collapses but swiftly regains its balance. What's unlikely about this film is its chosen director, Swingers writer and comic actor Jon Favreau and his convoy of inherently underused actors accept the action-fantasy aim and behave toward it with the slackness and sharpness of improv pleasantry. When they're regurgitating dull expository info dumps, they handle it the way an improv actor would, slickly laying information out into the scene, forging groundwork on which everybody can work, or play, depending on how a professional actor would regard a movie like this.
Tony Stark, billionaire industrialist, virtuoso inventor and extravagant playboy, is the successor to Stark Industries, the conglomerate chief weapons manufacturer for the U.S. military, built by his father. He's the personification of the military-industrial development against which Eisenhower forewarned, a monetary Hercules for whom war is just industry, who ensures there will always be a war somewhere. Tony is supposed to be unsavory before he's Iron Man, but he's portrayed as the ultimate leonine prototype for young guys, not only a master dealer and showman but a mastermind who can single-handedly assemble shockingly complex devices and contraptions from scratch.
This golden boy is so extraordinarily, exceedingly loaded that the mere idea of money escapes all import. So what if he lives in a literal Jetsons house seemingly suspended on a seaside rock face in Malibu? He still has to fly for lengthy, unexciting spells to get around the world. In his exclusive jet, yes, but isn't it bothersome to be that rich and still embarrassed by the bylaws of reality? He can meet the expense of anything he wants, but it doesn't make things go faster or last longer.
Although he has flown his way through more bimbos than he even remembers, Tony's real intimates are the best that money can't buy, but he doesn't seem to appreciate them: We're supposed to think his best buddy is Jim Rhodes, played by Terrence Howard, who is underused in this superfluous role, the military half of a kindergarten-simple military- industrial liaison, but Tony only cuckolds him and Rhodes takes it lying down. His secretary Pepper Potts (for god's sake) cast as Gwyneth Paltrow as if she's somehow more than a token love interest. And his business partner Obadiah Stane (what the hell?) sticks Jeff Bridges with the next most generic caricature, but at least a necessary one.
Tony and Obadiah are preventive-war profiteers who have confidence in broadening and asserting one-sided American supremacy through military and economic measures, and give false piety to the sentimental pseudo-patriotism that whatever is good for Stark Industries is good for 'Murica. Tony's turning point he is suddenly held hostage, which is seen as a flash- forward opening sequence, when he starts to realize that there's more to strength and leadership than artillery can ever communicate. Sohebecomes Iron Man? OK, I mean, what could I expect?
I think the reason audiences have liked this particular comic book flick is because of Downey. The effects highlight the mass and immensity of his clanging ensemble, and it trust mainstream audiences to be interested by the trouble of aerial steering with formidable thrusters on the bottoms of his feet. But the movie isn't so much a showcase of Iron Man as of Downey. He is a very physical actor who, like Bette Davis, Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, runs almost purely on presence. Favreau grasps this. When Tony puts on his Iron Man, we spend as much time inside it with him, listening to his impetuous, cocky voice, as we do watching him rocket through the the heavens or clank about on the ground.
Downey has crossed the threshold into a well-merited phase of blessing in his career, where he can't seem to go astray. He's always been incomparable on screen, but presently we're even more delighted to see him. What's more, he constantly brings more to his material than his role necessitates, not that that's a big challenge with this film. Whether a given film itself doesn't match him or is very good indeed, he adds something that makes it something to see: Him.
Another appreciated appearance is Bridges, who has spent his career being underused. Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, Cutter's Way, The Fisher King, The Vanishing, The Big Lebowski and even The Morning After substantiate his significance. Obadiah Stane could have been less, a lot less. But Bridges finds bits of behavior, like the way he holds his whiskey glass, in an admirable attempt to transcend a generic character. Really, we find ourselves surprised by his development through the story.