When wealthy industrialist Tony Stark is forced to build an armored suit after a life-threatening incident, he ultimately decides to use its technology to fight against evil.
If you're not familiar with the superhero Iron Man then know this: he's not an alien, he doesn't get his powers from radiation exposure nor did he react to his parents' murder by dressing up as a bat. The movie adaptation was in gestation for nearly 20 years, but as comic book characters go, Iron Man is not well known to the general public. So, is director Jon Favreau's film just a desperate barrel-scraper limping out after all the other major crime fighters have been given the movie treatment?With a soundtrack of cranked-up rock and Robert Downey Jr nailing his role as arrogant playboy arms manufacturer Tony Stark, this isn't as angsty as the Spider-Man films or the X-Men franchise, with their superheroes fretting over their personal lives.
Even waking up to discover that he's been kidnapped by Afghan terrorists who demand he construct them a missile doesn't faze Stark, nor does the electro magnet wedged into his chest and running off a car battery, thereby preventing a shrapnel wound from killing him. The terrorists foolishly leave Stark and his new friend Yinsen (Taub) to work alone, so they shouldn't be surprised when the pair lash together a fully-armoured mechanical death suit and escape.
The film shifts gear dramatically here, like switching channels from a John Pilger documentary to an episode of 'The A-Team'. The movie acknowledges this, reveling in its mix of the audacious and the absurd. Later scenes of a totally redesigned Iron Man landing in an Afghan village, sorting out a terrorist siege in a couple of seconds by shooting the bad guys, then flying off again verge on the same glorious lack of liberal hand-wringing that made Team America World Police so fantastic.
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