Metalheads

For those of you who haven’t heard there’s a new superhero on the block. He’s called Iron Man and he rocks.

There are two groups of people who will go and see this film: Those who know their Iron Man from their Spiderman and think Superman is a lame superhero and those who never knew who Iron Man was before they saw a trailer where Robert Downey Junior put on a shiny suit. I, for the record, am in the latter.

So does the latest big budget superhero action movie cut it? Hell yes. Iron Man right is up there with the best of them and far far away from the likes of Daredevil (which strangely enough Iron Man director Jon Favreau had a small part in.)

Robert Downey Jnr plays Tony Stark: CEO of weapons manufacturer Stark Industries, a seriously rich guy with a penchant for fast cars and disposable women. Despite being pompous, immoral and frivolous Stark is immediately likeable. He lives alone with his maid, hostess, butler and general busy body: Miss Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) who even dry cleans his conquests’ outfits before sending them home after a one-night stand.

Stark is the epitome of the eligible bachelor. Men want to be him. Women want to bed him. But, being head of the biggest arms manufacturer has its downsides which Stark finds out when his convoy is blown up and he is kidnapped.

Following the explosion Stark is left with an electromagnet in his chest to stop the shards of iron from penetrating his heart and instructions to build a guy a big fat rocket. Armed with the supermagnet Spark creates the Iron Man suit that he hopes will save his life while witnessing the damage his weapons can cause in the wrong hands. (Because it’s fine when Americans use them. Just don’t let those evil doing Arabs get their hands on them. Hmm)

Downey Jnr does his best to make a very complex character with a skewed moral compass highly likeable. The black and white lines of good vs evil are a little too black and white but Jon Favreau insists that this is a type of escapism which: “offers these simple solutions to these complex problems.” I kind of get that though I think the cleverest films are those that skew the line ever so slightly.