Entertainment, Movies - Marine Corps Times

Film Review: ‘Iron Man’

When word got out a while back that Marvel Comics’ next big-screen project, “Iron Man,” would star Robert Downey Jr., a lot of fanboys (myself included) had similar reactions: Huh?

But Downey, riffing brilliantly on his own bad-boy persona, is the absolute perfect pick for this version of the ol’ shellhead — which, it must be said, is a fair distance from the current baggage-laden comics version.

VIDEO:

'Iron Man' trailer 1

'Iron Man' trailer 2

Downey plays Tony Stark, a wisecracking, hyperkinetic rock star with a slight attention-deficit disorder who knows he’s about 50 times more brilliant than anyone else in the room — a mix that proves devastating to the ladies.

He establishes the character early on in a scene in which Stark goes to Afghanistan to show off his company’s latest toy, the Jericho missile, for a bunch of U.S. military brass.

“They say the best weapon is the one you never have to fire,” Stark says. “I prefer a weapon you only have to fire once. That’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far.”

Right on cue, the small mountain range behind him pretty much vaporizes, sending out a blast wave that almost knocks the generals’ socks off, as Stark strolls off to grab a vodka martini from his portable bar.

Working with two pairs of writers — normally a recipe for disaster — director Jon Favreau, a self-professed lifelong Marvel fan, gets the tone exactly right: slick, hip, self-deprecating and always, always ultracool.

Most importantly, he doesn’t succumb to the all-too-easy temptation to let computer-generated imagery obliterate the rest of the film.

Unlike so many CGI-drenched flicks, Favreau takes a good hour to kick the story into gear so we can get to know Stark and the other principals, including his sexy, super-efficient assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow, getting hotter as she gets older), and business partner Obadiah Stane (a bald, bearded, nearly unrecognizable Jeff Bridges).

The plot has Stark being kidnapped by Afghan terrorists — all wielding black-market ordnance stamped “Stark Industries” — who want him to build a Jericho missile for them. Instead, he crafts his first Iron Man prototype and blows his way out of there.

Chagrined by the realization that his company has so much blood on its hands, he decides to pull out of the arms business and go to work refining his “Iron Man” (actually a gold/titanium alloy, he notes), with a vague notion to “do good.”

This leads to some of the film’s best sight gags, with Stark pretty much trashing his high-tech lab while trying to master his anti-gravity boots.

Of course, the terrorists — in league with a well-disguised villain much closer to home — are hardly going to sit still while their favorite “merchant of death” walks off into retirement!

OK, so nothing deep is going on here. In fact, if you stop at any time to actually think about what’s going on, it falls apart. Then again, the beauty of this film is that you don’t ever have to stop and think about it.

My personal favorite bit of goofiness is the film’s substantive Air Force presence, embodied most prominently by Stark’s military liaison, Lt. Col. Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes (the always-smooth Terrence Howard).

The script, which implies that the Air Force is running the war in Afghanistan, will surely have the flyboy brass back at the Pentagon trading high fives — especially the scene in which Iron Man dogfights in the high clouds with two F-22 Raptors.

With visual and verbal humor, highly appealing performers, eye-popping stunts, great action, a teasing dash of sexuality and even a social conscience, “Iron Man” is top-shelf popcorn fare, one of the best big-screen adaptations of a comic ever.

You couldn’t ask for a more mindlessly exhilarating kickoff to the octoplex silly season.