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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Iron Man

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#1 of 1 Posted 4/28/08 11:54 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 23097.1 ]

IRON MAN

Paramount Pictures/ Marvel Entertainment
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Jon Favreau
Written By: Mark Fergus, Hawk Osby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, based on the Marvel comic created by Stan Lee, Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Shaun Toub, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb
Screened at: Regal E-Walk NYC, 4/28/08
Opens: May 2, 2008

“You’ve been working for years for Tony Stark, yet you still have to bring him his dry cleaning?” exclaims a snide reporter for Vanity Fair to the man’s beautiful assistant (not an exact quote). “I do anything Mr. Stark tells me to,” replies Pepper Potts, “ I even take out the trash,” she concludes as she escorts the journalist out of the building. This is one example of the wit found in ”Iron Man,” based on the Marvel comic book character originating in April 1963. But when a picture costs the company one hundred eighty-five million dollars, Jon Favreau, directing a script by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcus, and Matt Holloway based on the aforementioned Marvel comic by Stan Lee Don Heck, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby, is not about to make a Sundance-style battle of high-level chit-chat suitable for Manhattan art houses. Instead, “Iron Man” is filled with stunning technical effects; in graphic animation, actual equipment that might be found in a huge Malibu cliff-side home, and top actors, some working for the first time in an adolescent extravaganza. If most movies that have come down the pike about the Iraq war bombed at the box office, this one, though the Middle Eastern country is Afghanistan, is likely to turn the tide.

There is nothing wildly novel about Favreau’s excursion into the bellicosity so endemic to that area of the world, except that this time, one of the villainous Afghan guerrilla leaders, Raza (Faran Tahir) speaks fluent English and aims not only to push the invading Westerners out of the country but to rule as much territory as his hero, Genghis Khan. (He might have seen, and been inspired by a sneak preview of Sergei Bovrov’s movie “Mongol,” about the early life of the Khan who in the thirteenth century conquered more of the known world than the Caesars.)

The scriptwriters have fashioned their lead character, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), into an American James Bond, except that this Bond is not so dweeby as to work for a government office. Instead he is a billionaire inheritor of the CEO position in a major weapons corporation, building the most sophisticated weapons imaginable for use by the American army, when he is not chasing—or more likely being chased by—women. Stark is a drinker, a gambler, and an international playboy who in one instance prefers working a gaming casino to receiving a major award. When Stark is ambushed in Afghanistan, imprisoned in a cave, and ordered by caricatured bearded fellows to make a missile for them (one missile seems to be enough to satisfy them), he secretly constructs a suit of armor impervious to bullets that allow him to napalm and shoot up the enemy while flying away like Captain Marvel. He does it all without saying “Shazam.” Not for him a reliance on the gods—on anything but his own genius.

Realizing that the Afghan terrorists are using captured weapons on ordinary citizens, Tony Stark has a turnaround, announcing that he is shutting down the arms business. Yet strangely enough he is instead fashioning a sophisticated suit of armor that allows him to fly—and unlike Icarus he uses metal instead of wax—and through trial and error, starting at one percent capability, constructs a suit that makes him invulnerable even to Kryptonite.

The film is not without romance. Tony is loved by his assistant, Pepper, who is played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Paltrow has never looked better despite the superior roles she has found herself in, including that of Viola de Lesseps in the high-level “Shakespeare in Love.” Sophisticated armor aside there is nothing more appealing to look at in this fabulously expensive blockbuster than Ms. Paltrow. Otherwise the side roles are stock, the foreign villains from central casting. Jeff Bridges turns villain as Obadiah Stane, who has worked decades for the company, who regularly praises and embraces his boss while all the while filled with envy and plotting his downfall. Terrence Howard takes on the role of Rhodey, a colonel who looks out not only for Tony’s safety but for ways to spin American foreign policy to avoid causing anxiety among the American people.

There is a problem with the predictable final battle, this one between Tony and Obadiah. If Tony is the world’s #1 weapons-creating genius, how was the second-rate assistant, Obadiah, able to build an iron man twice the size with twice the strength, giving Tony the fight of his life? Using Obadiah as a man who is not the traditional villain, one who from the start of the story opposes the hero, is a smart move. Better to see him as the caring, suck-up, second-in-command of a corporation, stabbing the CEO in the back so to speak when his seething envy fails to allow the phoniness to continue. “Iron Man” does not show Downey as the nuanced actor of more adult fare, as Paul Avery in David Fincher’s “Zodiac” or Bill Bush in Robert Altman’s “Shortcuts.” With a bushy beard and blazing, mischievous eyes, he portrays a brilliant scientist who may never have been the school nerd.

Rated PG-13. 126 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Iron Man

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