Iron Man

Infiltrating corners of our consciousness as diverse as Black Sabbath and Ghostface Killah, Iron Man is one of last culturally relevant superheroes to be adapted to the silver screen. Like Peter Parker and only a handful of other masked avengers, Iron Man’s Tony Stark is the rarest of comic book characters whose costumed alter-ego doesn’t inspire half the intrigue as the man underneath. While Clark Kent’s entire existence is an exercise in blandness, and Bruce Wayne’s hard partying is merely a smokescreen for his nocturnal heroics, multi-billionaire arms manufacturer Stark is a veritable lush who enjoys fast cars, fast women, and probably a lot more than the film’s PG-13 rating can let on.

Even after adopting his crime-fighting moniker, Stark still relishes the earthly pleasures of expensive Scotch, strong coffee, and New York style-pizza. Part of us even wonders if the reason he’s a superhero at all is he thinks it’s sexy and dangerous, kind of like the reason people skydive or buy motorcycles. Charming, brilliant, and yet shamelessly flawed, Stark is the perfect character for today’s renaissance of comic book movies, making his late arrival on the scene (how Daredevil and Electra got their days first will forever be a mystery to me) all the more vexing.

Luckily, the long wait has paid off. Iron Man is one of the defining statements of its genre, a funny and exhilarating piece of pop entertainment that is perhaps the first superhero movie whose greatness is derived almost solely from the its actors. For example: the loud metallic clashes between Stark and his villainous counterpart Obadiah Stone? Exciting enough I suppose, but it’s the battle between Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges to see who can chew up the most scenery that provides the biggest pay-off. Elsewhere, the always great Shaun Toub adds much-needed gravity to a role that, in less capable hands, could have easily gone the route of “Token Sacrificial Foreigner whose Death Opens the White Protagonist’s Mind to the Atrocities of the Third World.” Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard are grossly over-qualified to play the parts of the plucky assistant and the best friend, and the film is all the richer for it.

The movie kicks off with the lovable sot Stark sipping Scotch in a Humvee on his way back from an arms deal in Afghanistan, using his unbeatable charm to cajole laughs out of some stone-faced military escorts. After the convoy is ambushed (by some of his corporation’s own weapons) Stark is kidnapped and taken to a secluded cave where his captors give him one week to design a super-powered missile for some devious despot’s vague world domination plans. Instead (in one of many twists that require a sky-high suspension of disbelief) he designs a flying suit of armor with the help of a fellow captive engineer named Yinsen (Toub) and escapes off into the open desert where he is promptly picked up by American forces.

Now here’s where things get really interesting: guilt-stricken at the realization that his products are being sold on the black market to folks who are even worse than his own country’s military, Stark calls a press conference to announce he will no longer be manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. A physically broken yet mentally lucid Stark addresses the reporters while wolfing down a Burger King cheeseburger and looking like a man who is prepared to abandon all the rules he’s followed his entire life. The scene eerily recalls Robert Downey Jr.’s own decision to throw his drugs into the Pacific following a stint in prison, a resolution he just so happened to make while sitting in a Burger King drive-thru. It’s a nice touch, further validating one of the smarter bits of casting in recent years, and proving that there’s no actor better equipped to strike that perfect combination of swagger and vulnerability. It also kicks off the film’s outstanding second act, wherein Stark learns how to adjust to both his new outlook on life, and his giant malfunction-prone metal suit, which is like a character in itself.

Although the story is little more than your standard origin tale (and I’m still trying to figure out the logistics of the film’s final “climactic” action sequence), it matters little because the greatest joys Iron Man has to offer are the characters themselves, familiar archetypes made transcendent by the actors who play them. The whole glorious spectacle reminded me of the first Spider-Man movie: a bit light on thrills and plot development, but so full of laughs, energy, and heart that it’s nearly impossible to dislike. While the summer of 2007 featured one big budget disaster after another, let’s hope that Iron Man serves as a happy omen for all the sequels, remakes, re-imaginings, and stoner-buddy-crime-comedies-directed-by-acclaimed- indie-directors that will rock our sticky multiplexes before season’s end.