Review of Iron Man

Iron Man (2008)

Director: Jon Favreau
Writer: Mark Fergus (screenplay) and Hawk Ostby (screenplay)
Genre: Action/Adventure/Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Story

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a weapons designer and industrialist. He is the head of a huge company specializing in building the most high tech and sophisticated weapons. When Stark goes to show off his latest weapon for sale, his group is ambushed and Stark is taken prisoner. When he wakes up he is forced to build the weapon he was demonstrating earlier, but he has other plans. Stark decides to build an armored suit to help him escape. After he escapes he comes home to give everyone the bad news that he no longer wants to build weapons because they get in the wrong hands. Now he has to stop those that already have his weapons and figure out how they are getting them.

Everything Else

The directing by Jon Favreau was quite good. There was enough action to keep the film moving and enough slow times to make the story work well. At first it looked like the story was not going to have any depth, but after a while the plot thickened. Iron Man could be compared to Transformers or most Michael Bay films in that is was more action oriented than plot driven. There were not as many cheesy jokes as a Bay film, but the humor was still there in a less cheesy way.

Favreau takes his experience with Made and Elf to make a more action packed movie that still had good character interactions and some humor. Along with the directing, the script worked well even with the lines overused in all of the previews. The soundtrack was also very fitting for the movie. The acting on all parts was really good as well. Of course Robert Downey Jr. did well as his normal character; except this time he was a little more full of himself. I never much care for Robert Downey Jr., but he is a good actor and continues that with Iron Man. Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow both did great jobs in supporting roles. I have been much more impressed with Paltrow in recent years with her more mature roles. She fit the part of Pepper Potts almost perfectly. The real stand out performance was from Jeff Bridges as Obadiah Stane. I always like Bridges, but his hair (or lack of it) alone was enough to make him look a lot different in Iron Man. At first I did not even recognize him, but as soon as he talked I knew it was him. Bridges provides a strong performance along with all of the other actors in Iron Man.

The Real Deal

I was not getting myself too hyped up about Iron Man because I knew it was not going to be revolutionary. I liked it the same way I liked Transformers, but it had more character development. There was plenty of action to keep me entertained, but my wife felt it dragged a little. The only complaint I really have is that once it got going it pretty much ended so it could have been longer and have more action at the end. The movie was fairly clean aside from the violence so if you can handle a little violence then there isn’t much to turn you away. I would recommend this for a fun movie to watch without having to think about anything serious for a while and most people could enjoy it. And of course you have to admit Iron Man himself is awesome and they certainly capitalized on that in this movie.

The Short Version

Raw Score: 804,203
Sharon Movie? Yes

Dave's Movie Reviews is the place to find movie

reviews and discuss your thoughts.
Join the community by
Subscribing!

RSS feed or Email