A Fun Two Hours Of Nonsense

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2008)

Simply put, this was a very entertaining movie.
Despite the movie running a little long for an intense, action movie, overall it was still very interesting and fun to watch because the pacing was so good. Neither the action segments nor the lulls, the robot scenes or the soldier scenes nor the very low-key romance is overdone. It's all in good proportion. It's not an innocent based-on-a-comic character film but, frankly, what movie is nowadays? There's always some profanity and sexual innuendos that don't belong in a "kids" movie made today. Thankfully, that kind of stuff was a lot lower in content than the recent "Transformers" film I viewed.
The scenes with "Iron Man" a.k.a. "Tony Stark" (Robert Downey Jr.) in his suit and demonstrating his spectacular skills were - no surprise - the most fun to watch. (If you have a chance, catch this on Blu-Ray as the transfer is terrific). At the end of the film we get another robot, piloted by the corporate bad guy "Obadiah Stane" (Jeff Bridges) and that huge Iron Man-clone is fun to see, too.
Some complain the film is not really all that "smart" and it's a bit too predictable, but it's fun ride of escapism that offers a good two hours of diversion thanks to very good special-effects and mostly-likable characters.
Speaking of characters, it wasn't easy to recognize Bridges with a bald head and full beard but once I heard his distinctive voice, I knew who it was. Gywneth Paltrow played a sweet role as Stark's loyal secretary, "Pepper Potts." (Nice name!!). The Afghanistan villain was credible. Actually, I liked him better than the obnoxious Liberal news reporter, who was annoying.
The "moral" of the story the screenwriters preach is that military might as a deterrent to fighting terrorists can easily backfire as companies which manufacture arms for the U.S. could also be acquired by bad guys (because of greedy and corrupt U.S. businessmen). This is naive Liberal propaganda, the kind I would expect out of the movie industry, whether in Hollywood or Europe. Sadly, there will never be a shortage of bullies and evil people, who will then crush an unarmed foe as the people in this film attempt to do. It's also implausible any company like the one shown in this movie could so easily travel to a hot spot like Afghanistan and deal with terrorists. It's unrealistic, but that's today's movies for you.
Also, despite the nonviolent message in the story, the good guy sure wipes out his share of people with a variety of weapons! For someone preaching peace, he sure didn't hesitate in killing opponents.
Iron Man's metal suit is definitely very cool, equipped with about anything you'd need to fight an army of terrorists, or anyone else. The suit - and his super pacemaker - turn him into a Superman-type guy in that he can fly pretty high and pretty high. The latter part - how high he could fly - makes a nice conclusion, by the way, regarding the good guy's battle against the "bad Iron Man."