Iron Man

Rating: 8/10 (22 May 2010)

Spider-Man was great, the first Hulk wasn't, and the Fantastic Four did okay, and then came this film with Marvel creating their own film studio to complete their piece, from director Jon Favreau (Elf). Basically Tony Stark (National Movie Award nominated Robert Downey Jr.) is the successful and rich head of Stark Industries, who manufacture weapons all over the world, and his life is changed when he is badly wounded in the chest. Tony is saved by a special metal based plate in his chest that keeps the shrapnel from reaching his heart, but he is also forced to create a new weapon by his Middle Eastern captors. In the time he has to build this weapon, he instead creates a metal armoured suit to make his escape and attack all in his way, and he manages it. When Tony returns to the US, he announces that from his experiences, he realises his company is not doing good making weapons, and he starts making modifications to his armour suit design. While Tony changes the design, manufacturing it with gold and titanium, and adding a jet-propulsion system to fly, his second in charge Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) is still selling weapons to the Middle East. While in Afganistan, Stane comes face to face with Tony's original metal suit, and decides that it the new unknown "Iron Man" in the city, to go up against him. In the end, after defeating Stane, and against the advice of his crush-driven personal secretary Virginia 'Pepper' Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony announces to America and the world that he is Iron Man. Also starring Terrence Howard as Rhodey, Leslie Bibb as Christine Everhart, Shaun Toub as Yinsen, Faran Tahir as Raza, Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson, Bill Smitrovich as General Gabriel, Paul Bettany as Jarvis and look out for Stan Lee as the man in the smoking jacket. Downey Jr. has been away as a leading star for a while, and this is a fantastic return for him, and he has great support from a reliable Paltrow, and a mean performance from Bridges. There is good action and adventure, there are great special effects coupled with cool gadgets, and a quite engaging story to carry you along, it is a great fantasy superhero movie. It was nominated the Oscars for Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects, it was nominated the BAFTA for Best Special Visual Effects, and it was nominated the National Movie Award for Best Superhero. Very good!