Iron Man: A Movie Review

It’s a refrigerator! It’s a bus! No, it’s Iron Man!

And it honestly get’s better as you move past the title of this latest comic book adaptation from Marvel Comics. Surprisingly better. It is on a par with Spiderman in terms of quality, though not for family friendliness. With witty dialogue, interesting and well developed characters, plus a good mix of empathy, humor, action and surprise, Iron Man delivers where so many other comic book movie adaptations have failed. But my main regret is that I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this movie to families with children. It is rated PG-13 for good reason. A scene of implied sensuality and numerous scenes of nearly graphic violence clearly cause Iron Man to break from acceptable family fare, although I doubt that will keep many families from checking it out, as I discovered during my viewing of the film.

Robert Downey Jr. demonstrates impeccable acting chops, as do Jeff Bridges and Terrance Howard. Downey Jr. portrays “Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist and genius inventor who builds a high-tech suit of armor to escape captivity” in Afghanistan, later improving on the model to return to his land of captivity and kick the teeth of his terrorist captors while rescuing a local group of villagers (Quote from Fandango.com). As a weapons manufacturing mogul, Stark observes first hand, the impact his weapons have on innocent people and he decides to commit his life to inventions which promote peace rather than war. In theory, this seems laudable. But Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) had other ideas, nearly destroying Stark and Iron Man in the process. A budding love interest seems in the works with Virginia “Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), the loyal personal assistant to Starks. Maybe the sequel will explore it further. Stay tuned a couple of summers from now. I expect that Iron Man II will dish up some real bad guys in the next go around who actually give the robotic costumed dude a run for his excessive money.