Iron man movie reviews
Rated: PG-13
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release Date: 2008-05-02
Starring: Robert Downey Jr. (Tony Stark/Iron Man), Terrence Howard (Jim Rhodes), Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts), Hilary Swank, Samuel L. Jackson
Directed by Jon Favreau
Produced by Avi Arad, Kevin Feige
Written by Arthur Marcum, Matthew Hollaway, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby
The first big blockbuster of 2008, “Iron Man” is flat-out fun. One of the biggest surprises for many people is that this fun does not come from the action scenes (they’re fine, by the way). What really amazes in “Iron Man” is a tour de force from Robert Downey Jr. (they could’ve named it Downey Junior- The Movie) and a solid script, that efficiently introduces us to the Iron Man history and proves to be a fascinating entry in a possible new franchise.
Iron Man was directed by Jon Favreau, who also helmed the family-friendly adventure Zathura and the Will Ferrell vehicle Elf. Both films were much better than they had any right to be, and Favreau knows just how overdone the superhero origin story is.
Director Jon Favreau is smart enough to let Downey puncture the pomposity of the sci-fi genre, but he’s also smart enough to meet the genre’s demands. The action is big, high-stakes and not played for laughs. The fact that the spectacle has its basis in character, and that Downey is such a likable presence, makes the action scenes all the more effective. This time, it’s personal - for the audience, too.
“Iron Man,” directed by Jon Favreau (“Elf,” “Zathura”), has the advantage of being an unusually good superhero picture. Or at least — since it certainly has its problems — a superhero movie that’s good in unusual ways. The film benefits from a script (credited to Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway) that generally chooses clever dialogue over manufactured catchphrases and lumbering exposition, and also from a crackerjack cast that accepts the filmmakers’ invitation to do some real acting rather than just flex and glower and shriek for a paycheck.
The Story
Tony Stark has the world on a string - gorgeous women, a Malibu mansion to die for, and more money than any one man should ever be allowed to accumulate. Oh yeah, life’s sunny on Stark’s side of the street. But karma is a bitch and Tony’s ticket is almost punched when he visits the US troops in Afghanistan and his convoy comes under enemy fire. Pulled barely alive from the wreckage, Stark is taken to a hillside hideaway and tortured into building his most powerful weapon – the Jericho missile - for a brutal batch of terrorists.
After a low-key entry, the action ramps up quickly as we backtrack over the 36 hours leading to Stark’s kidnapping, a predictable but amusing gallery of rich-boy excesses - Stark eschews an industry award to play roulette, pulls a glamorous reporter from Vanity Fair (who presumably have paid well for the privilege in the real world) and buys a horrendously expensive work of art that he knows nothing about simply because he’s told it’s ‘overpriced’.
