REVIEW: Iron Man1

So after months of anticipation, I finally got to see “Iron Man” (starring Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow) today. So here’s my review of the film – and even a full day before it premieres in the U.S.!

This was pretty much the first film I’ve seen which I’ve deliberately avoided film clips and tv spots on. I watched the two trailers that were released, and that was it. Still, I was very excited to go see the film, as it looked as if it had the potential to be the best superhero flick ever with an amazing cast.

The story is fairly simple. A weapons manufacturer, Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) gets captured by terrorists while on a publicity stunt in the Middle East. When forced to build the terrorists a superweapon of the kind he normally builds for the army, he retaliates, building a suit (which is awesome) that he escapes in. When arriving back in the U.S., Stark decides to stop weapons production in his worldwide company Stark Industries, which he runs beside his father’s good friend Obadiah Stane (played by Jeff Bridges – who also played “The Dude” in “The Big Lebowski”). While Stark runs/flies around the world helping and saving people in his new, rebuilt Iron Man suit, Stane decides to take the weapons business into his own hands. The story was a pretty standard superhero story, but with what I thought was much more likeable characters than what you usually encounter in these types of flicks.

Robert Downey Jr. is PERFECT as Tony Stark. He does some great acting and brings humanity to what have in the wrong hands been a stiff and boring character. It clearly shows that the improvisation of some of the dialouge in certain scenes really helped all of the actors to make their characters more natural. Gwyneth Paltrow (Shakespeare in Love, The Royal Tenenbaums, Se7en) as Tony Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts is great too – I was pretty surprised that she was in a film like this to be honest. Terrence Howard (Hustle & Flow)  as the military general Jim Rhodes also works pretty much perfect for his very formal role. The big casting surprise when I first read about the film was the inclusion of Jeff Bridges (“The Dude”) as the main villain, Obidiah, a.k.a. Iron Monger. It’s pretty cool to hear that he has exactly the same voice as he did when he acted in the Coen brothers’ “The Big Lebowski”. It was a long time since I saw him in such a big role, and he’s still a very good actor. To round it up, the acting and casting of this film was probably the best I’ve ever seen in a superhero film!

There’s some really cool visual effects in this one. All of it was done by the team at ILM (who did Star Wars, Transformers, Narnia among many others) who just gets better at their work for every passing film I see. The vfx are definently on par with what I saw in “Transformers” last year, and some of the shots are even better. Transformers had some great actors interacting with virtual objects, but they’ve pretty much perfected it now, as it looks even more realistic. It just looks like all of the robotic arms interacting with Stark during his construction sequences are there for real! Oh, and this film has the second best suiting-up sequence ever, right after “Hot Fuzz”.

The music reminded me in places of the soundtrack to “Transformers”, which is why I was suprised to find that the score wasn’t done by Steve Jablonsky, but by Ramin Djawadi, who did the score to “Mr. Brooks”. During a few scenes, the music is very active, which really helps as it’s quite brilliant. The sound effects pack a pretty heavy punch as well, with loads of the sounds using the lower LFE channels. The explosions and gunfire are really loud, which helps sell the realistic that goes through so much of the rest of the film.

To sum it up, this was by far the best superhero film I’ve ever seen, and the best action film I’ve seen since “Transformers”. With some great acting and characters, some fantastic visual effects and a really good score, there’s no way I could give this film less than full marks. I can’t wait to see what director Jon Favreau will do next!

Verdict: 10 out of 10