Fine - Not Fantastic

Rating: 6/10 (25 May 2008)

I'm not sure I would agree with the folks who give this an 8 or higher -- but then, my scores for movies are probably graded out on a higher bell curve than most folks seem to think exist. So, a 6 for me, means well above average.
The acting in the movie is, for the most part, uniformly good, even the small roles. I would agree with some of the user reviews who said that some roles were very small and the actors were underused. In particular, Terrance Howard doesn't have much to do with his role - although I guess if they go the standard Hollywood sequel route, at some point Howard will get to top line a War Machine sequel. Paltrow, as Pepper Pots, however, strikes me as stunt casting pure and simple. This is a role that could have been handles by any number of other actresses and probably handled equally well, if not with more ease and grace. Some of the secondary roles, such as Leslie Bibbs were also way too minor not to be played by a decent character actor, and others, such as Jeff Bridges, simply were too rushed to reflect the arc that characters took from the start of the movie towards the end.
This feature is your basic super hero origin movie - likely because the filmmakers must assume that most people (such as myself) would not be familiar with how Tony Stark became Iron Man. On that level, I think the movie worked really well. The story was plausible (although I feel more could have been done to explain both the Arc reactor technology and the actual medical issue of the shrapnel/heart danger).