Review of Iron Man (2008) by Lewisp. — 10 May 2008

This is basically 'Robocop' updated to 2008. Except it's nowhere as good as that film. The '87 thriller is set in the future with a semi-plausible scenario: the body of a murdered police officer is used to create a robot who still retains traces of the dead man's memories.

The core of Iron Man is totally implausible: set in the present time, the iron man (played by Robert Downey Jr.) must prance around with some kind of magnet implanted in his chest cavity, preventing shrapnel from puncturing his heart.

Then, he invents an iron suit which enables him to fly at supersonic speeds and kill terrorists without suffering serious injury. Like Robocop, a computer interface is suggested inside the 'mask' of both superheroes; but in Robocop the hero is haunted by the memories of the dead man whose body was used to create him.

There is no such internal tension in Iron Man. It's strictly a good guy-bad guy shoot 'em up. Downey plays Stark, the head of a large corporation which manufactures weapons. Stark is depicted as an arrogant playboy who takes no precautions when he travels around in a Humvee in Afghanistan.

He ends up being captured by a local warlord and his crew of motley insurgents and realizes that they have been using his company's weapons to fight US troops. Now he suddenly has a change of heart and uses his skills (he's a genius!) to create an iron man outfit to escape the bad guys (they think he's working on a missile).

When he returns to the US, he decides to utilize the prototype of the iron man outfit he created in Afghanistan to become a superhero fighting for good. A good part of the film is taken up with Downey designing the new Iron Man outfit; during the 'testing phase' he gets thrown against the walls of his laboratory numerous times (how exciting!).

Finally, he starts flying through the air with this metal suit on and almost crashes when he goes too high up in the atmosphere and his suit gets frozen with ice (funny how he wasn't smart enough to invent some kind of deicing device contained on most commercial aircrafts).

Terrence Howard (of 'Hustle & Flow' fame) isn't doing much hustling and flowing here in a do-nothing part as an army liaison officer for the munitions company. Similarly Gwyneth Paltrow, Stark's personal assistant, engages in a great deal of pointless banter leading to a non-romantic moment at the film's denouement.

Jeff Bridges probably has the best part as Downey's partner in the multinational corporation who ends up betraying him and working with the warlords and terrorists in Afghanistan. But how did he so easily get past the alarm system or other security devices in Downey's home? You would think that breaking into a home like that wouldn't be so easy.

In the end, there is the obligatory battle between the two machines (done much better in Terminator 2). Bridges looks ridiculous when he takes off his metal helmet and all you see is his face inside the metal contraption.

I fail to see why so many critics gave this film good marks. It's strictly a film for uneducated teenagers who read comic books all day. It also serves to lull people in this country into a false sense of security vis-a-vis the terrorist threat.

By creating an invincible 'Iron Man" who can easily mow down terrorists and bad guys, it makes us forget that the bad guys in real life are not so easily defeated. Case in point: 9/11. The only winners here are the actors who collected nice paychecks for participating in such a cheesy and worthless venture.