'I was in an Elton John video? When did this happen?'It’s a curious comic book adaptation that opens with the abduction of a wealthy American in Afghanistan, centres on a character who is essentially an asshole, and co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow. Iron Man performs all these feats, while ticking every box on the origin-story template that’s been banging around for forty years, and giving Robert Downey Jr. the role, if not of a lifetime, then certainly of the season.
He plays Tony Stark, head of a massive weapons manufacturing company currently hocking its latest product to the US army. He has the ingenuity to build a bunker-busting missile, the spiky energy to set off any party, and the rakish charm to disarm even the most good-looking investigative reporter. In short, he is a man due for a comeuppance – which duly comes when he is forced at gunpoint to assemble a WMD for Arab terrorists. He capitulates, but constructs his own method of escape: a one-man war-machine of wrought iron and flamethrowers, powered by a quasi-hydrogen battery. In doing so, and slaughtering countless gibbering captors, he learns that helping people is better than building things that kill them. Helping white people, that is.
The plot thickens on his return to America, but I shan’t go into that here, as one needs to take all the surprises one can (unless you’re a fan, in which case you already have a fair idea of how the third sequel is going to pan out). There are romantic entanglements with secretaries, predictable double-crosses, and shit-gets-built montages aplenty, the whole thing occurring in a universe which has never experienced The Incredibles, let alone Frank Miller or Alan Moore. It could all be quite wearisome, were it not for the first-rate cast and the manner in which they have been directed.
Jon Favreau, perhaps best known for his starring role in Doug Liman’s indie-comedy Swingers (and here providing a cameo as, very appropriately, Stark’s bodyguard and bag-handler) shows a surprisingly strong hand, and a welcome willingness to allow his cast to improvise and generally piss around. It isn’t Altman, but it does grab your attention. While there might be some to claims that Downey Jr. wheels out the same mannered, drug-spun bundle of ticks in all his recent performances, his Stark is an entertaining mixture of charm, idiocy, and muscle somewhere between Jack Sparrow and Batman. It is a credit to the actor that he makes no effort to alter the essential attitude of the man post-abduction, a move which forces the sceptical among us to question the ethical veracity of those who have been part of his inner circle all along, including the perpetually placid Terrence Howard and the alarmingly not-terrible Paltrow. Then there’s Jeff Bridges, playing the ridiculously titled Obadiah Stane, who – though he is the obligatory grizzled old guy – invests his character with some pathos and psychology, even if his plotline is underdeveloped. (I guess there’s a reason he’s named after the shortest book in the Old Testament.)
In these $100 a barrel times the cyber-dream of flawless man-machine integration cannot be that simple: Stark’s suit is a sleek exhaust-free number which literally runs on the power of his own heart, whereas his nemesis’ bulky Hummer-parody belches exhaust fumes. The latter is a personification of the outdated mechanised armoury of the pre-Cold War period; Iron Man on the other hand is an example of contemporary military tactics, even at one point being mistaken for an UAV. This American playboy – whose father literally invented the Atomic bomb – at one point launches at whim into a middle-eastern war zone, overcomes the villains with his absurdly advanced artillery, then exits as soon as he has brought about peace, leaving the natives to happily sort out the mess. All this happens bloodlessly of course, Favreau showing a marked aversion to killing, always cutting away at the moment the trigger is pulled. Still, considering the fetid morality of films such as Jumper, these sidesteps cannot be entirely condemned.
It is by no means a masterpiece, but in the modern blockbuster environment, when the best James Cameron we can come up with is Michael Bay, it certainly entertains for a couple of cheerful hours, and we can only hope it makes absurdly sculpted goatees 2008’s must have facial accessory.
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