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Downey, dark script are strong, leaving us ready for more
By Rich Heldenfels
Published on Thursday, May 01, 2008
Robert Downey Jr. seems to be everywhere these days, trumpeting his sobriety and promoting his new movie, Iron Man.
Fortunately, in Iron Man he has a good piece to promote, both for his performance and the movie as a whole.
The movie is not perfect. It runs about 10 minutes longer than it should, lagging especially when it tries to deal with a potential romance between billionaire Tony Stark (Downey) and his loyal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). The ending involves one of those clashes of behemoths that movies based on comic books require; it's well executed but not as good as other parts of the movie.
Still, by the end the audience will be well primed both for any sequels and spin-offs that Iron Man has set in motion.
Based on a comic-book character that goes back to the early '60s, the movie is at its core about not only the physical remaking of Stark but his emotional transformation.
As the film begins, Stark is a hugely successful weapons manufacturer. But he is also bitterly distant from his profession. He can make the rote defense of what he does, but it is not lost on him that he loves to build things — and the things he builds are used to destroy buildings, armies, lives. He buries his misgivings in decadence; Downey, his face showing the wear of years of his own personal turmoil, knows how to mark that territory.
Then, after demonstrating a murderous new missile in Afghanistan, Stark is captured and dreadfully wounded by a multinational band of terrorists armed with Stark-built weapons. His only escape is by technology — not only a new device to keep him alive, but by building one of his finest devices for the terrorists' use.
Instead of building the weapon, Stark secretly develops a powerful metal suit that aids his escape. (One of the more grandly implausible elements of Iron Man is Stark's hiding the suit construction from his captors. Considering the naturalness and grit of a lot of the movie, I had to keep reminding myself that
it's from a comic book.)
After his escape, Stark is a changed man. He wants to get out of the weapons business, to the dismay of Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), the man in day-to-day-charge of Stark's company, and James ''Rhodey'' Rhodes (Cleveland's Terrence Howard), Stark's longtime friend in the military. Stark also becomes obsessed with building a better version of his metal suit, and a good bit of the movie deals with the trial-and-error leading up to the suit's completion.
The suit underscores the fundamental guy appeal of the movie. The first time they see the suit's panels ripping like shining muscles, some fanboys are going to be close to wetting themselves.
Director Jon Favreau and the four screenwriters know they have to acknowledge that part of the audience; there are visual and narrative nods to Terminator, Robocop and other films, as well as homages to old-school fantasies. Playboy Stark's flight attendants dress like stewardesses from a bygone era. Stark himself presents a new weapon in a monologue with echoes of Patton — only with thick layers of irony.
After all, the filmmakers want their action to have an intelligent underpinning. So we're reminded that Stark's attempt to get out of the weapons game ends up turning him into an ultimate weapon. And the film's end — after the big battle — leaves plenty of room for him to reconsider his actions in still more Iron Man movies. Favreau has reportedly said he wants to make a trilogy, and to make the story much darker in later films.
The darkness is already there in Downey's riveting performance. Howard, Bridges and Paltrow really don't have that much to do beyond filling expected places in the narrative — although Howard especially is set up for better business in later films. But Iron Man all comes back to Downey; even alone with his machines, he's a fascinating character. And very funny.
Bring on the sequel.
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in a blog at http://www.ohio.com. You can find more columns, questions and answers at http://www.ohio.com/entertainment/heldenfels.
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