Whelp, I've gota free moment and type-itchy fingers so I guess I can throw up a proper review of Iron Man now. :) And after those fiascos we call Spder-Man 3, Fantastic Four- Rise of the Silver Surfer and... actually every single Super-hero movie other than the latest Batman one, it's great to finally have a proper Super-hero movie on the market. (Yes, I'm lambasting the Spidey movies. I know, I raved, but once the buzz of 'ohmygod,aspider-manmovie!!' had worn off and I cast a jaundiced eye back, I realise two things: web-slinging scenes aside, they're not that great- and Tobey McGuire is a very special kind of ugly and chinless.)
I was never a big fan of Iron Man. A guy who gets all his powers from a suit? How lame is that? What if disaster strikes and he's not wearing the suit?? (Yes, I would have made a great supporter in the pro-mutants movement...) And then the Civil War arc came along and he got Spidey to reveal his secret identity... Well.
But in this case I'm willing to cast aside my usual snobbery and dissociate the movie character from the comic one. Because really, how can you not like Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark? He plays the character so very well (and looks disturbingly like him), from the eccentric 'drive-everyone-from-your-board-to-PA' nuts to the sudden change realization of what exactly his weapons are used for today, it's all very much believable. There's also plenty of moments for giggles as he displays a very boyish learning curve with his Iron Man equipment. (I won't go in to the details but let's just say it involves a Road-runner-esque moment where his face is enthusiasticly introduced to the wall/ ceiling.)
The big finale though was a little dissapointing in that Stark's suit wasn't running at full-power. So rather than a real men-in-robot-armour throw-down, we got Stark getting smacked about until he outwitted the other guy. While such a victory might be more in keeping with the brains-over-brawn theme of the movie, I miss the eye-candy.
Right, last point in this far-too-long post: am I the only one who picked up the socio-political commentary about how the powers that be sits on their asses unless it behoves them to get involved? Yes, I'm talking about the bit where Iron Man flys in to Afghanistan to kick some terrorist butt after seeing it on the news. Interesting how the US government has firepower in the area but doesn't get involved until they get a bogey on the radar which really scares them in case the terrorists are air-borne. After what's been going down in Myanmar, the picture this depicts is... unsettling. While I suppose no government owes it to the rest of the world to play playground monitor and sacrifice their own people and resources to do it, such an expectation doesn't sit well with the moral posturing the USA's always thrown about. It doesn't go down so smoothe either with the surprisingly loud idealist in me who's been shouting 'why can't we all just get along?' for the last... oh, six years or so.
So anyway, here's to Iron Man, a kick-ass movie that's deeper than those turds in the review section of The Straits Times give it credit for.
