STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2008
STARRING: Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Leslie Bibb, Shaun Toub, and Faran Tahir
WRITTEN BY: Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
DIRECTED BY: Jon Favreau
GENRE: Action
RATING: PG-13

Is it "clever" or "obvious" for a director to open a superhero movie like Iron Man with AC/DC's "Back in Black" and close it with Black Sabbath? Sure, it's better than opening and closing with the stars of High School Musical, but is it perhaps a situation where our expectations have been so lowered by junk like the Fantastic Four movies and Ghost Rider that a good music choice and some brilliant casting can be all that we need to move a superhero movie from rotten to fresh? It looks like the answer is “yes.” After Hellboy II and The Dark Knight, we will likely look back on Iron Man more critically, but, right now, it works. Director Jon Favreau makes several clever choices throughout and the two leads - Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow - are nothing short of fantastic, but Iron Man is still a little hollow at its core, one of those movies that you tell your friends that you liked but you secretly wish was better. It's very reminiscent of the first Spider-Man movie, a fun, clever ride that turned into something more in its superior sequel. Iron Man is fun at the moment, but it will be a footnote to what I suspect will be its inevitable (and much better) sequels.

Like a lot of the best heroes, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) comes with flaws. He drinks, he womanizes, and he rules in that super-sarcastic Downey sort of way. (I don't think I've ever been happier about a comeback than that of this talented actor.) Tony forgets the names of the hot young female reporters he beds and only has three real friends – assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), military buddy Rhodes (Terence Howard), and business partner and semi-mentor Obadiah (Jeff Bridges). Oh yeah, and he also makes weapons of mass destruction with his company Stark Industries. While on a trip to sell some of his new Jericho Missiles, Stark is blindsided, kidnapped, and held hostage. Instead of caving to his captors’ demands and building another missile, Tony builds an early incarnation of his Iron Man suit and frees himself Gigantor-style. After blasting his way through a few gun-toting terrorists, Stark returns to the States and tries to dismantle his entire company, finding himself now a little conflicted about being a wartime profiteer. Pepper is semi-supportive, Obadiah thinks he's crazy, and Rhodes basically just fulfills a few necessary plot points (although will, reportedly, play a much bigger role in the next film). Eventually, the man who would be iron has to put on his best suit and battle his original captor (Faran Tahir) and someone much, much closer to him (but far more evil).

To be blunt, Downey's performance as Tony Stark/Iron Man is one of the best in superhero movie history, maybe even THE best. He makes the bumpy patches of a pretty deeply flawed screenplay significantly easier to handle and his turn alone makes the film worth your time. On a similar note, the lovely Paltrow reminds viewers how much they've missed while she's focused on her family and been less prominent on the big-screen in recent years. She hasn't been this charming or charismatic in a long time. On the other side of the ensemble ledger, Howard is good but very thinly drawn, and Bridges is the opposite - all scenery-chewing mania, as if the writers and Favreau knew that Iron Man didn't have a very strong villain and they needed something as vibrant as Downey to try and balance the film out.

Iron Man is good but don't be surprised if you wish that the armor was a little more chipped and faded and not quite so perfectly "hot-rod red." The film works best when it feels like Downey is going off-book, either with just a character choice or possibly even with a line. The man does a lot of the heavy lifting in Iron Man, even without the titanium exo-skeleton. It doesn't help (or maybe it does considering his performance) that Downey's required to talk perhaps more than any superhero ever. A shocking amount of Iron Man is made up of tech-speak about the design of the suit or about weapons and the business of Stark Industries, which, admittedly, gets more than a little dry at times. But, just as Iron Man is about to crash through the floor of superhero movies, Downey, Paltrow, or a very impressive sequence of visual effects tap into that summer movie vein, the one that's grown weary of the year to date and just wants to have a good time.