Iron Man DVD > Reviews > I Am Iron Man

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Good
Soundtrack	Good

Advantages:	Great central performance
Disadvantages:	'Durkha, durkha' terrorists, many plot holes

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Superhero films are probably my guiltiest of guilty pleasures. I enjoy them pretty much unconditionally because I'm a nerd. But unlike the kind of nerd who begins criticising a comic adaptation as soon as the first publicity shots show that the hero's costume has been 'updated' - you know, the sort of fan who writes unintentionally hilarious screeds about their childhoods being ruined by the shade of Superman's new cape - I never really read many comics as a child.

So when I go and see a film like Iron Man, it's safe in the knowledge that I'm about to see a hugely silly film with lots of cool explosions and a terrific cast, and a vague attempt at a 'serious' subtext so that the director can look his parents in the eye unashamed over Christmas dinner.

Robert Downey Jr, then, is Iron Man. A superhero I'd never really heard of, who is pretty much as generic as it gets (he flies! He hits people! He's bullet-proof!).

Tony Stark is a weapons designer, who owns a massive arms dealing company. For the purposes of this film, that makes him a massively lovable and cuddly chap, and the fact that he's a womanising drunk is presumably supposed to be charming. Just when you think he can't get any more punchable, Gwyneth Paltrow turns up as his PA. Thankfully Robert Downey Jr is an actor for whom I have a certain affection ever since his bizarre Australian accent in Natural Born Killers, and I wonder whether the film's producers were banking on the rest of the audience sharing my little quirk to make Stark at all bearable.

Following a FANTASTIC ambush scene that really captures the confusion and sudden brutality of a warzone, Stark has an electromagnet plugged into his chest - and he randomly invents a clean nuclear reactor to power it. At this point, he enlists the help of his fellow captive to create a heavily-armed powered suit of armour with which to escape. While under surveillance. No, really. He's supposed to be making a rocket and instead he's hammering out chest plates.

Eventually he discovers that his patriotic Amurrican arms dealership has been selling weapons to the 'bad guys' (and yes, it really is that cut and dried) and becomes Iron Man in order to destroy caches of his own weapons and to fight corruption within his own company.

It's a bit too long, has an arms dealer as a hero, his friend in the Air Force might as well wear a big jumper with the letter 'T' on it, it wasn't worth Gwyneth Paltrow coming out of her semi-retirement, and the Afghan fighters that are the enemy for much of the film come over as slightly less sophisticated than those in Team America.

And yet, I did really enjoy it. Jeff Bridges chews up the scenery, Paltrow is wasted but brilliant, and RDJ carries the film remarkably well. The various plot twists are intensely predictable, but each one is fun. The central conceit of a man who discovers his conscience by losing his heart is interesting (though under-developed), and I loved the film's final line. Also, although he's also got bazooka rockets and stuff in his suit, Iron Man's main armament seems to be non-lethal, which is kind of cool.

Screen superheroes are probably running out of steam. The bit where the hero gets thousands of bullets pumped into them at close range before kicking everyone's bottom is passing into cliche, and this film even copies V For Vendetta's 'my turn' line (which sadly merely highlights the fact that what follows is not a weirdly beautiful slow-motion kung-fu knife fight). But by rooting Iron Man so firmly in the sphere of real warfare, this film just about gets away with it one more time. And this is, simply, because Robert Downey Jr is an engaging actor.

The special effects were always going to be the talking point of the film, and they're pretty good. I did wonder, however, whether there was anything particularly new here. It's traditional when this kind of film comes out for the makers to point to some computer generated whizz-bang scene and claim that they've raised the bar to a new level. Now, unless someone's going to give me a deeply boring fact about the detail on the 3D rendering, I just don't think that's the case here. Apart from the flying chap in red and yellow, the effects all seem to be quite physical and real world. Which is a jolly good thing, in my book.

The soundtrack is mostly hard RAWK, and of course Black Sabbath's 'Iron Man' makes an appearance. Which just made me a little sad that the Cardigans song of the same name didn't... although I now have an uneasy feeling it might have been a cover version.

Apparently something happens at the end of the credits, and everyone told me to stay to the very end. But the neon flashing vector graphics of the closing credits was really messing with my head so, um, I left. But stay till the end, it's probably really cool and funny.

Iron Man is, by it's very nature, a deeply flawed film. But it's also a lot of fun, and held together by a great central performance by cinema's most unlikely action hero. Watch it, enjoy it, but check your brain by the door.