Iron Man

 

While in an war zone, showing off his newly developed weapon, Tony Stark (Robert Downy Jr.) is captured and badly wounded by a group of rebels. There he meet an interpreter and medic called Yinsen (Shaun Toub) who has hooked his heart to a car battery to keep the shrapnel out of it, or something like that, I am not completely sure. All I know is without it he will die. The rebels demand that he build them his newest weapon so that they can control their part of the world. Instead, he builds a new energy source for his heart and together with Yinsen they build a suit of metal and weapons scavenged from Stark Industries weapons the rebels have.  He makes it out and is picked up by the US military.

Once he is returned home he declares that Stark Industries will no longer be making weapons. His business associate Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) as well and Stark's personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and his friend from the military Rhodey (Terrence Howard) all chalk it up to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Obadiah tell him to lay low and recover while he sets things right.

While resting Tony makes a new heart gizmo and begins working on a new and better suit. While this is going on the rebels find his old suit that he used to escape and give it over to ...Obadiah? Apparently he has been funding them and giving them weapons for some reason and he also hired them to kill Tony so can take over the company. Unfortunately for Obadiah when they found out who they were going to kill, they used him to make weapons instead. It didn't work out but it was worth a shot.

Tony has perfected his suit and uses it to help the people in the Middle East who have been hurt by his weapons and then he is almost caught by the US military. Fortunately Rhodey is able to get him out and cover everything up, but by this time Obadiah has perfected his own suit. The fight between them is pretty awesome, I am not too sure how Tony survived the overloading to the core of Stark Industries but somehow he did even when Obadiah and his bigger, stronger, more powerful suit didn't, but whatever. It was a good movie.

That was actually the only problem I had with the film. The rest of it was awesome with a story that flowed nicely and made sense and was really well acted. I'm not completely sure why Obadiah was funding the rebels in the first place (unless it was to prolong the fighting so that the military would want more weapons, but its the military...they always want more weapons); other than it was awesome. It wasn't dark and angsty like a lot of superhero moves have been lately. It was serious but with a a lighter side and a few comedic scenes.

All in all an excellent film. I have no idea if it was faithful to the comic books or not, but the movie in itself was very well done.

Grade: 8.5/10