Iron Man
You have to like a comic book movie that casts Robert Downey Jr. as the superhero and Gwyneth Paltrow as the plain jane unnoticed assistant. Jon Favreau, my co-star from Deep Impact, directs this entertaining action outing. Downey (Downey Jr.?) plays Tony Stark, the genius son of one of the creators of the atomic bomb. After graduating from MIT at 17, the young Stark followed in his father’s footsteps by creating high-tech weapons for Stark Industries. One of the likable aspects of this movie is how cheerfully unlikeable Stark is. Downey Jr. (Downey?) can make an unlikeable, obnoxious, selfish, womanizing, amoral, weapon-building genius likeable like no other. And it’s not just because he poses for pictures with the troops in Afghanistan who are taking delivery of Stark’s latest and greatest missile system that promises to rain unprecedented destruction on the countryside.
One thing leads to another, and next thing you know Stark decides maybe he can use all those clever robots and computers in the basement of his palatial L.A. home for something more constructive than weapons. As Iron Man, Stark flies around in a high-powered form-fitting metal suit complete with, well, weapons, a heads-up display, and a bluetooth cell phone. The plot revolves around the double-dealings of Stark Industries with the bad guys and the good guys, perpetuating war for the sake of arms sales and Tony’s transformation from CEO to Iron Man. The action is entertaining, but what sets the movie above the run-of-the-mill flying superhero movie is the devil-may-care attitude of Stark, who is clearly having as much fun as the audience.