Wow!

Rating: 8/10 (27 November 2008)

Iron Man. You hear the title, watch the trailer, and you might think to yourself, "Oh no, not another ridiculous, overrated comic book movie." After seeing Iron Man you will walk out of the theater thinking, "Man, that was good!" Iron Man begins with a couple of armored cars driving through the Afghanistan desert. In one of cars there's a few soldiers and the rich and famous Tony Stark, CEO of Stark Industries which is a company that builds weapons. One moment Tony is flirting with a female soldier, the next guns are firing and everything is blowing up, and then you see Tony held hostage by Afghan soldiers.
The next bit is a tad confusing. Tony is all of a sudden back in the U.S.A. You definitely know he's rich(he owns a huge house in Malibu) and you know he must be good with the ladies(one night stand with a Vanity Fair reporter). He also has his own personal assistant, Pepper Potts. It is in that moment when you first hear that name that you know you are watching a comic book movie. Names like that are only used in comic books.
You might be wondering what's going on. Is this a flashback? Did he already escape from the Afghan soldiers? As only the rich and famous can do, Tony arrives three hours late for a trip in his private jet. He arrives in Afghanistan, and it's then you realize that Tony hadn't escaped yet. He hadn't even been held hostage yet. This whole sequence has been showing you what Tony's life is like and how he came to be in Afghanistan. From there, you know what happens. Armored cars. Fire. Hostage.
His captors want Tony to build them a missile, the Jericho missile to be exact. If he doesn't...well, let's just say it's bye-bye Tony Stark. Tony was injured. The only thing keeping him alive is this round metal device implanted in his chest which magnetically keeps bits of shrapnel from reaching his heart. The man who implanted that device, Yinsen, is Tony's assistant for building the Jericho missile. But Tony isn't building a missile at all. He's creating a metal suit powered by a miniature arc reactor that he will put inside himself to keep him alive. The suit will make him so powerful that he will knock all his captors away and escape before they can let five bullets out of their machine guns.
Of course, Tony escapes and gets back to the U.S.A. Tony decides he doesn't want to make weapons anymore. He wants to reverse the bad his weapons have done. The rest is up for you to see.
Robert Downey Jr. does a great job playing Tony Stark. He transforms himself into the character. He is no longer Robert Downey Jr. He is Tony Stark. And the action bits...they're just great. No comic book movie is complete without some amazing action sequences, and the action scenes in Iron Man make the movie.
Overall, there may be some cheesy bits of dialogue and some things you might not like, but you forgive Iron Man of its faults because it's just that great.