Has he lost his mind? Can he see or is he blind? Can he walk at all, or if he moves will he fall? Is he alive or dead? Has he thoughts within his head? We' ll just pass him there. Why should we even care? These are just some of the issues brought up in the new Iron Man movie. Or at least they would be if Jon Favreau had listened to my idea of just turning the theatrical comic book adaptation into a two-hour long Black Sabbath joke to explode the minds of the fanboys in anger (me and Favreau... like this by the way [for those of you not upgraded to my mental blog, I crossed my middle and index fingers]). And while my idea would certainly be the greatest thing ever, the actual movie is not very far from that (for those searching through that mess of hyperbole and skewed unlisted dimensions, I basically said the movie was really great).
Yes, the movie is really great. Robert Downey Jr. is incredibly charming and witty and good-actingly in the role. I don't know if he's just really come into his own or he wasn't used right before or I just wasn't paying attention, but every flick I've seen this dude in in the past five years as been awesome, and he usually was the best thing in it. Iron Man is no exception from Tony Stark's smarmy lines that are so clever and quick that if Downey didn't do such a superb job selling it you wouldn't believe it possible (from anyone other than me of course) to even his sparse ethical dilemma emotional side, all are well done and none feel like they break from the character. And yes while this is Downey's show he does have a cast of supporting players. Gwyneth Paltrow's here as the alliteratively named love interest, but better than that. I was pleased to see that she didn't just merely slip in that archetype (Hollywood's name for stereotype). Her character, Pepper Potts, and Tony Stark clearly have and interest in each other, but with Stark's ego and the fact that she's his assistant and does practically everything for him not machine building related (even dismissing his one night stands) you can see that this relationship isn't about to take off soon and even when it does (like in the sequels we should be seeing) it won't be perfect. There's actually depth to this relationship you don't see in typical action blockbuster. Terrence Howard's military straight man performance to Downey's cool ass playboy can be overlooked, but some of the best stuff we see from Stark, both in funny lines and character emotion, come in the presence of Howard's character. He does something you don't usually see from the supporting cast of a superhero flick: they bring certain things out of the main character you wouldn't have seen otherwise without him, truly flushing out Stark as multi-dimensional. And finally we're brought to Jeffrey Lebowski err... Bridges as Stark's partner cum bad guy Obidiah Stane, which is pretty much my only complaint about the flick. Not that Bridges lacked in his performance. No, he does a great job as the snake-charming megalomaniac. My only beef (which I guess is kinda three) is that we're presented with a fairly B-list Iron Man villain, another business man evil doer that are all so popular especially in the last decade of superhero flicks (see: Norman Osborne, Harry Osborne, Lex Luther, Wilson Fisk, Max Shrek, yadda, yadda, yadda), and the fact that the superhero and the supervillain have the same power. Yeah, I know it says something about the duality of man, extremes of the world, or whatever, but I kind felt something missing when two people with the same power fight (one thing about the new Hulk movie I'm not exactly jonesing for).
So, the movies good. Downey's good. Second characters don't fall into cliche traps. And it's damn funny and entertaining. I'd say the second best superhero film that'll come out this year (don't dissapoint me Dark Kinght). Also as you can tell Stads beat me to this, but screw him, I'm doing it anyway. I'll teach him who does the movie reviews around here!
Rating: 8/10
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment