Downey is Solid As 'Iron Man'
Posted on: Thursday, 1 May 2008, 09:00 CDT
"Iron Man" makes you believe Robert Downey Jr. has other superpowers than the ability to resurrect his career every time he gets strung out and imprisoned.
When he's on his game, spitting out one-liners like a sprinkler head, working his charms on the camera, Downey has Cary Grant charisma. About the only way you can make Downey dull is to, say, encase him in a suit and helmet of iron, then supplant that with fake CGI.
Thankfully, most of "Iron Man" steams forward with Downey out of the suit as billionaire genius/playboy arms contractor Tony Stark, who early in the film discovers his weapons are being sold under the table to terrorists when he visits the Middle East.
Jihadists capture Stark, who awakens from an injury-induced coma with shrapnel near his heart and finds he's been kept alive only by an electromagnet implanted in his chest. The bad guys demand Stark build them a powerful missile, but instead he constructs an impenetrable superhero suit. Once he gets back to the States, Stark vows to halt the evil ways of his corporation, while secretly determining to start flying around in his suit to battle injustice.
If only Bill Gates and Donald Trump would come to similar epiphanies, maybe they'd be strapping on spandex and rescuing cats from trees and tackling purse snatchers rather than unleashing Windows Vista and infinite versions of "The Apprentice" onto the unsuspecting public.
It's certainly easy to be inspired by "Iron Man," which is easily the best superhero romp since "Batman Begins" (2005), which for my money remains the best in the genre. Director Jon Favreau took plenty of cues from the "Batman Begins" template, choosing wisely to focus more on the process of a man evolving into the superhero rather than flying around exploding and saving things.
The restraint pays off hugely, and the human story is so involving it's almost an afterthought when Iron Man first appears in his full regalia more than an hour into the film.
Unlike most hero flicks, "Iron Man" parses out its action, focusing on the human story of the man behind the mask. With few slam-bang action pieces until the torrid finale, the film proves much of its mettle through intelligent writing and superb acting, with a supporting cast of three brilliant actors who have snagged six Oscar nominations between them.
A bloated Jeff Bridges devours the scenery as Obadiah Stane, Stark's surly second-in-command, and Gwyneth Paltrow glows as Pepper Potts, Stark's smarmy assistant. Terrence Howard carves out an endearing straight man as Jim Rhodes, Stark's military liaison who has to cover up the Iron Man experiences as "training exercises."
After a run of so many brooding, depressive comic book crimefighter adaptations, it's refreshing to see a vigilante who actually enjoys doing his thing.
Downey embodies the film's easygoing confidence. With unlimited financial resources and unmatched intelligence -- as well as a sense of humor about it all -- Stark knows he can indulge his impulses and explore them to their wild endpoints.
He stocks his private jet with model-like stewardesses, crashes star-studded galas, stages impromptu press conferences and, just for the heck of it, uses his Iron Man suit to launch straight up into the air, just to see how far he can go, Icarus myth be damned.
For Stark, as well as Favreau and Downey, if you're not vying to get closer to the sun regardless of the consequences, you're simply not trying hard enough.
Review
Iron Man
***1/2
--Rated: PG-13 for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief suggestive content.
--Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges.
--Director: Jon Favreau.
--Family call: Fine for families.
--Running time: 126 minutes.
At aznightbuzz.com
Catch Phil Villarreal's online review of "Iron Man." It is produced by StarNet's Jaynelle Ramon.
Source: The Arizona Daily Star
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