Iron Man

IRON MAN
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges
Director: Jon Favereau
Written by: Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway.

Another Marvel comic arriving on the big screen, Iron Man, brought bang up to date, tells the tale of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), a genius weapons inventor/industrialist, who when showcasing the ultimate weapon – Jericho - to the US army in Afghanistan, gets taken hostage by the terrorist group The Ten Rings, and forced to build a Jericho for them.
Hooked up to a car battery as an emergency preventative from shrapnel entering his heart, an injury sustained during the kidnapping, Tony, with help from another hostage instead creates the Ark reactor, a new type of power generator, which replaces the battery and proves this previously untested theory possible. Following on from this he designs and builds Iron Man, a suit he uses to gain escape from the terrorists.
On returning to America, after three months in captivity, he renounces weapons building in a public press conference, much to the chagrin of his mentor Obediah (Jeff Bridges), Tony’s late father’s best friend and Tony’s business partner since the death of his father. Obediah brushes off this momentary lapse of sanity to the press and tries to talk ‘sense’ into Tony.
Having seen the devastation his inventions have created, Tony continues to develop a new and improved Iron Man in secret, and upon discovering that someone has double dealt Stark Industry weapons to the terrorists, goes on a jaunt to Afghanistan to put this to rights. Unfortunately, this is not in line with Obediah’s plans, who was the one who ordered the hit on Tony in the first place, is trying to force him out of his own company and brings his true motives to light.
Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), is Stark’s long suffering assistant, harbouring a secret crush on her lady killer boss. She does whatever Tony needs, including sometimes ‘taking out the trash’ a reference to one of the many ladies Tony has brought home for the night. Their relationship never gets more romantic then an almost-kiss, and paves the way for some interesting action if there is to be a sequel.

Iron Man doesn’t have as much action as was expected, although there is enough and very well executed CGI at that. However it focuses on showing the kind of character Tony was before being taken hostage, wealthy, spoilt, child prodigy, with little regard for others, and who he becomes after his traumatic experience, although as the last scene shows – he doesn’t change every facet of his personality! The movie has a very ‘go America – fighting the good fight’ feel to it, as can only be expected by this type of superhero movie, one supposes. Robert Downey Jr. is excellent as Tony and has good back up with Jeff Bridges playing the corrupt Obediah, and evidentally loving every minute of playing the two faced baddie. Gwyneth Paltrow moves away from her usually emotionally deep roles, to play Pepper and does a good job also – though the role is hardly a challenging one.

Iron Man does exactly what it says on the tin – it’s a entertaining couple of hours, and everyone gets what they expected, action, drama and a little (almost) romance.