Iron Man
Robert Downey Jnr IS Iron Man
I was in two minds when I walked into the cinema to watch Iron Man. Firstly,
because The Girlfriend threatened to inject pepper spray into my eyeballs if the movie sucked, as she wanted to watch Sex and The City instead. Secondly, I remember the cartoon series from the nineties being pretty shitty, with other superhero cartoons like Spiderman and X-Men kicking it squarely in the balls. And thirdly, I noted that the movie was directed by Jon Favreau, best known for directing the kids' film Zathura, which I never watched, but understood to be pretty mediocre.
It was thus with great joy and relieved corneas then, that I can say that Iron Man is QUITE the enjoyable flick. Robert Downey Jnr is pretty f*cking good with his portrayal of the hero Tony Stark, who starts out being an immoral (but still likeable) shit, selling weapons of mass destruction and sleeping with lots of skanky women. During a demonstration in the Afghanistan, he is kidnapped by terrorists and is forced to build a metallic suit to break out of his prison, and from there the movie really takes off.
The rest of the cast are all pretty solid, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Terence Howard and Jeff Daniels ably supporting Downey Jnr. Apparently this film will be the first of a planned trilogy like Spiderman, and after smashing the box office in the States (it's currently well on it's way to making $300 million) I'm sure they will roll out the next film pretty quickly.
I'm not going to give away the rest of the plot, partly because I don't really want to spoil anything, but more importantly, because I've had a few Jamesons and can't really remember it now. I might remember it tomorrow morning when I wake up, but I'm not going to feel like rewriting this then. Take it from me, if you enjoyed the X-Men trilogy, thought Spiderman was okay, and thought The Incredible Hulk (with Eric Bana) was incredibly shit, then you will very likely enjoy Iron Man.
The cool thing about these films are that the special effects keep getting better and better. I was literally sitting there with a semi through the entire film, which I think made The Girlfriend, as well as the old woman sitting on my left, rather uncomfortable.
In summary, a good entertaining blockbuster to watch on the big screen.
