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Iron Man
Reviewed by Theo Michelfeld
Posted: May 4, 2008

The summer movie season is here, and it's time for the studios to trot out the heavy artillery. First on the queue is the comic book adaptation Iron Man, and this is one of those maddeningly brilliant, philosophically unstable movies that makes a film critic's job so challenging, and also so much fun. What's great about this movie is plain to see. What's wrong with it is tempting to ignore. But if audiences are willing to embrace the dual nature of a hero like Iron Man (and I'm quite sure they will, in droves,) then maybe they can also acknowledge the conflicted feelings this piece of entertainment provokes. As for me, I loved this film, and I also think it's something of a fraud.

The story concerns a billionaire engineering prodigy named Tony Stark who designs and sells weapons technology for fun and profit, lives the life of a playboy rock star, and happily ignores the moral implications of his life's undertaking. But his conscience awakens when he and his U.S. Army convoy are ambushed in Afghanistan by local warlords armed with Stark Enterprises weapons. Stark is wounded and kidnapped, but escapes his captors by building a flame-throwing, bulletproof suit of iron. Back in The States, he publicly pledges to shut down the weapons division of his company, and then he secretly builds an improved iron suit equipped with rockets, machine guns, and what-have-yous, to go back to The Middle East and destroy his own misappropriated weapons. Meanwhile, his business partner, Obidiah Stane, sets out to kill Tony Stark, steal Tony's "Iron Man" technology, and re-establish the Stark Technologies weapons division.

Despite all the gizmos and violence, Iron Man equips its characters with plenty of consistently witty dialogue, and frequently lets the good times roll. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as the cavalier hero who intimidates people, bickers with computers, and even browbeats his own robots. Frequently, comic book movies can't figure out a way to let their heroes be even half as fun as their villains, but in this film, Tony Stark is nothing but fun. And he's funnier than Peter Parker, Bruce Wayne, Bruce Banner, and all the X-Men put together. Meanwhile, Gwyneth Paltrow lends her considerable acting talent to the thoughtfully-written role of Tony's personal assistant Pepper Potts. And the seemingly inherently benevolent Jeff Bridges upends audience expectations as the duplicitous, menacing Obidiah Stane.

With its first-rate acting, brilliant dialogue, and sometimes beautifully calculated plot machinations, Iron Man is in many ways a fantastic movie. But it does raise moral issues for which it must then account. Folks, I've touched on this subject before, and I'll say again: I have no problem with Hollywood escapism. I'm not going to sit here and analyze all the fun out of a Die Hard flick. But Iron Man wants to carry a more sophisticated mantle. It wants to be a "message film," and to earn those stripes, it must subject itself to analysis. It is indeed a brave and noble movie to expose an ultra-mainstream audience to the ugly reality of war profiteering. But its supposed "message" is fraught with hypocrisy. For one thing, even after his "awakening," Tony Stark continues to confront violence with violence. Unlike Spider-Man and The Hulk, this super hero deals out a lot of death, including a scene in which he incinerates his Arab captors alive. In this day and age, American audiences may be content to accept that these movie villains "had it comin'." But when a rare sympathetic Middle Eastern character rushes headlong into machine gun fire so that the wealthy American hero may escape to freedom, the film could be construed as saying that some skin tones are more expendable than others. Furthermore, the "Peace Through Strength" philosophy expressed by the pre-enlightenment Tony Stark is not exactly undermined when his subsequent quest to destroy his own weapons takes place only beyond U.S. borders. And when Tony puts innocent people in harm's way while recklessly trying out his new flying armored suit, it's clear that his sense of entitlement has not completely abandoned him.

That first flying scene, perhaps more than any other, best illustrates this film's dark underbelly. Tony may be done profiting from weapons, but he's not done making them. If these filmmakers wanted to take a philosophical stand and deliver a truly great super hero movie, they would have foregone the profits of the inevitable sequel and had their hero destroy his Iron Man suit at the end of the movie. But they didn't do anything of the sort because, like the world's weapons manufacturers, they're in it for the money. Thus, when Tony's Iron Man technology inevitably ends up in the wrong hands, and when catastrophe on an inconceivable scale is only narrowly avoided, our hero merely responds by quoting Ozzy Osbourne. And so it seems killing machines are OK after all, as long as they are wielded by a single, reckless, über-wealthy, extremely charismatic, tenuously moral individual. Folks, if that sentiment doesn't make you uncomfortable, so be it. But let's not pretend this film carries a message of peace.

Copyright © 2008 Theo Michelfeld