Review: Iron Man
May 3rd, 2008 | By Rick | Category: Reviews
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Iron Man is a kick in the pants, and, that’s about all any summer-blockbuster- wannabe can aspire to, isn’t it? It’s lots of fun, it doesn’t make us think (too much anyway), and it appears to have repeat-business potential. This last is important — for a film to make truly astronomical numbers, it has to get the fan-boys-and-girls to go see it more than once. And at $150 million in production costs and $75 million for prints and advertising (or so says the Hollywood Reporter), that’s a lot of fan boys.
Still, Paramount and Marvel Studios should be happy: it really is a fun movie, even if we have seen it all before, and let’s admit it: we have. There’s this guy who’s kind of a jerk, or at least he does some colossally jerky things, and something happens to him, something out of the blue, something nobody could have predicted, unless you’ve read a lot of comic books before, that is. After this happening, he’s changed — changed, I tell you — and starts fighting for good, truth, and the American Way.
This time around, the guy who’s changed is Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), ga-zillionaire industrialist and womanizer-around-town. He really is a jerk, a cold-eyed maker of deadly armaments who doesn’t care — too much, anyway — where they end up. He’s in Afghanistan, trying to sell the pentagon on another god-awful-expensive and destructive piece of hardware, when he’s kidnapped by some Afghani bad guys and forced to build ‘em a weapon system. Only he doesn’t build a weapon system, see, but an iron suit with flame-thrower arms and rockets on it’s shoes, and he uses it to escape from his captors. (Hey . . . nobody ever said suspension of disbelief is a bad thing.)
Anyway, Tony is a changed man — see, what’d I tell you? — and he decides to rededicate the company, which he inherited from his father, to doing good the world over. This sets him against his father’s old friend, and Tony’s mentor, Obadiah Stane (an enormously entertaining Jeff Bridges) who hasn’t exactly been playing on Stark’s side for some time now.
And that, as they say, is the set-up . . . while Stane plots, Stark perfects the design on his suit, and voilá, Iron Man is born. Along the way there’s a budding romance between Stark and his long-time assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and plenty of CG special effects, which are just average — the animation of Iron Man isn’t bad, but the green-screen work in the climatic battle could’ve used a bit of sprucing up.
What makes Iron Man a cut above others of its ilk — I’m thinking of Daredevil, Spiderman III and X-Men: The Last Stand here — is the lightness of touch, both in direction and acting. For a $225 million dollar movie, upon which careers undoubtedly rest, it doesn’t take itself too seriously. This is thanks, in no small part, to its director Jon Favreau and star Downey Jr. Favreau’s playful touch made the interminable suit-building scenes at least bearable, and he and editor Dan Lebental cut the action sequences nimbly. Downey Jr.’s persona is perfect for this vehicle: he’s wry, cynical and hopeful, all at once. It’s as if his well-known troubles had given him a vulnerability that shines through no matter what. Although his transformation from callous to caring happens improbably fast (one minute he’s a capitalist pig and the next a capitalist pig with a conscience), once it happens, his reformed self is very believable.
The script is by committee, which is usually a liability, but seems to have worked out all right in this case. However, I wish that for once we didn’t have to see the superhero origin story right up front. Back in the day, before the Batman franchise was revived by Christopher Nolan, Tim Burton didn’t feel the 
need. In Batman, the existence of his neurotic Caped Crusader was a given; though we did get some of the origins in flashback. What resulted was a leaner, more streamlined story, centered on Batman and his fight with his arch-enemy the Joker. Here, due to the producers’ insistence on sticking with the formula, we get an overly-tedious first half, stuffed with two — count ‘em two — suit-building scenes. It isn’t until the third act kicks in, and we get down to business countering Stane’s dastardly plot, that the film ratchets into a higher gear.
A more troubling aspect is the film’s reliance upon Hollywood’s latest racist stereotype for many of its heavies. It seems we always have to have somebody, some other nationality or race or religious affiliation, to vent our national hostility upon. These days, of course, it’s Muslims and people of Arabic descent; it used to be Germans or Russians or Japanese or, in the days of old, unreconstructed Westerns, Native Americans. That the real villain is a Wasp-y businessman is almost worse, as if Muslims aren’t sophisticated enough to be a real problem for our hero.
But perhaps I’m over-thinking what’s meant after all to be an entertaining popcorn flick, designed to lure that sweet 18- to 25-year-old male demographic into the darkness in malls across the land. Unless I miss my guess, it’ll succeed in that quest quite admirably, thank you very much. I just wish it could do so without pandering quite so much to our latest national fears.
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Rick, you’re right that it’s just a fun popcorn flick, but at the same time the motivations for who the bad guy is, where the film is set, etc. have to come from somewhere. Iron Man was initially an anti-communist fighter, conceived in ‘63. The warzone he found himself trapped in initially was Vietnam. In the nineties it was updated to the Gulf War. Today, it’s Afghanistan. Iraq would have worked better, but I’m guessing they figured that was a little too hot-button for a comic book movie. (by the way, I know all of this from Wikipedia…although I have been known to pick up a comic book in my time, Iron Man wasn’t one of them).
So now we’ve got an arrogant war-crazy American waging war on the terrorists who ambushed him with his own weapons. A story for our times, no?
Besides, Rick, film criticism isn’t any fun if we just say the same things all the other film critics are saying, or making the same observations that any guy on the street could make (even though we are guys on the street). So no, I don’t think you’re over-thinking. In fact, I read your site because I want to hear your over-thinking. So over-think away my friend.
What is interesting about Iron Man is that it seems to be condemning American foreign policy even as it glorifies it. Quite the paradox.
By the way, did you stay for the scene after the credits?
I think you hit it on the head … the movie tries to have it both ways. It tries to condemn American foreign policy and glorify it at the same time. Those Arabs are made both the bad guys and the good guys, who need protecting from that benevolent father figure, the good ol’ USA.
Actually, I just saw the after-the-credits scene on YouTube … “the avenger initiative.” If that doesn’t sound shadowy-governmenty, I don’t know what does …
I say “aye” to the over-thinking allowed by Evan. And I like both of your thoughts on the foreign policy and foreign enemy aspects. Great write-up, Rick.
Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are a classic combination… Charlie Wilson’s War made me feel a little better about U.S. foreign intervention, it seemed to work out that time
I agree - great write up, I loved the film.
Patrick — It worked out if you discount the Taliban, which was the result of said intervention. That said, I loved Charlie Wilson’s War; you just have to realize it, er, glossed over certain unpleasantries.
Nick — Thanks. I liked it too.