Seduced by Tony Starks

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2013)

Now here's a cool movie. Driven by the personality of the character Tony Starks (Robert Downey Jr.'s iconic role), Writer-director Shane Black along with Writer Drew Pearce have churned out a film that charms us in spite of ourselves, similar to the way a young, unattached Starks might lure a young woman under his sheets. And like those conquests, we allow ourselves to be duped even though we see it coming.
Even if we haven't watched another Iron Man film, we know this character—cocky/funny, so cool that sometimes he impresses his own self, but with a heart of gold, if not a chest arc reactor, underneath it all. It's the role that defines Robert Downey Jr. as an actor. Whether the man was this character before he took on the role or Tony Starks consumed him is a matter of the chicken and the egg, but to the fans of late night talk shows, the difference between the real man's personality and that of his character is zilch. It makes you wonder if he's doing any acting.
The film opens in the standard fashion of the third movie of a trilogy, if I'm to believe the words of a self-aware character in the third "Scream" installment—it takes us back into the past and develops a story-line that was lurking all along. Starks tells us as much as he narrates the introduction scene. So we know this is going somewhere—somebody is going to get slighted and hatch some diabolical plan. Starks lures a beautiful botanist (the lovely Rebecca Hall) into bed while raising the hopes of a fledgling scientist (Guy Pearce, in a bland role) desperate to speak with him. If he happens to disappoint either one of them, that's just Starks being Starks, plus he can always fall back on the old standby that he was drunk.
We fast forward to the present and find Starks taking a break from the superhero game, dealing with anxiety stemming from the aftermath of his last adventure, and tinkering around with building new Iron Men. Yes, for those uninitiated, He Is Iron Man. And the innovations to his new prototype suit will be utilized later in the film in any creative way imaginable, as well as the numerous older models. In fact, the artificial intelligence Starks has installed into his suits surpasses the intelligence and wit of most humans, and it in itself could be considered superhero material. Alas, Tony's tinkering days seem numbered as a new threat appears on the national stage, a menacing terrorist known as the Mandarin. When we see the Mandarin played by the distinguished Ben Kingsley, we know something's up. This is going to be a juicy role, and when his true nature is revealed, we are far from disappointed. For now, the character confuses us. He says some wise things about human nature amidst Native American imagery, and seems to even brandish a Native American accent, but he also appears to be your stereotypical Middle-Eastern terrorist. What exactly are his motives and aims, to take over the world or what? This part of the movie was not well developed to me, and becomes murkier when more Bad Guys pile up.
As Tony Starks investigates this new threat, supporting characters go a long way in playing off of Starks' personality. It leads to a lot of wisecracks and clever lines—a lot of comedy—which all manage to set Starks up for the one-liner to trump them all. I was especially impressed by a young boy who kind of serves as a young Tony Starks, played skillfully by Ty Simpkins. Starks and the script don't infantilize the boy, but respect the character by providing him with just the right amount of intelligence and maturity. Yes, little boys can be strong characters post Star Wars Episode I, featuring a mop-topped little Annie contractually obligated to yell, "Yippee!" in every scene he's in.
The makers of this film have keyed into Starks so much that he doesn't even need to wear the Iron Man suit for much of the movie. Maybe because I generally don't like superhero movies or tedious action, I didn't hate them for it, and since his character has been developed over three movies previous to this one, every other character can just riff and react to him. Starks drags us and his suit along and it doesn't really matter who wants to take over the world and why. At times the character so coolly goes about his business that I wish the role carried some extra gravitas, but I do get a sense of that later on when Iron Man must deal with an incident on a plane. This is one moment when we're reminded that Iron Man is a superhero in a sequence that you just may find exhilarating if you remembered to check that disbelief. Still, I never got the sense that the stakes were that high or Iron Man was in any real peril. And the closing action sequence for a movie like this always seems to take place in some dreary abandoned warehouse or its equivalent, and this is film is no exception.
The film has more than one surprise, which goes a long way to offset its standard comic book clichés. The Iron Man suit does everything we imagine it can potentially do and more, in ways that both pleasantly surprise us and cheat us. Seeing Jon Favreau in the film in what basically amounts to a cameo, although a character vital to running the plot, took me out of the movie. It made me think, oh, that's the guy who directed the first Iron Man; did he direct this one too? Directors, in this case former directors, need to avoid putting themselves in movies. Especially if their name is M. Night Shayamalan . And the movie's longer than you want it to be. But it's entertaining and exceeded my expectations.