IRON MAN
Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard
8/10
In 'Iron Man', Robert Downey Jr. plays the billionaire alcoholic weapons inventor Tony Stark - a smug playboy who receives the wake-up call of his life when he is shot down in enemy territory in Afghanistan by one of his company's own weapons. Stark is a new man when he returns to America and is determined to stop making weapons. He also starts to see more in his loyal assistant Pepper (Gwyneth Paltrow) than just an in-house coffee maker. When Stark's green-eyed business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), unsurprisingly disagrees with Stark's no-new-weapons policy, the hero takes things into his own hands by creating a metal suit, equipped with boosters, so he can fly back to Afghanistan where he'll be able to blow up the weapons and the men that made them.
'Iron Man' doesn't do much wrong. It's got some great action sequences, some amazing special effects, is pretty loyal to the comic and, most of all, features an insanely terrific performance by Robert Downey Jr. There are some things director Jon Favreau ('Elf', 'Zathura') could have done to improve 'Iron Man'. Firstly, he needs to reacquaint himself with a pair of scissors. The film is too damn long. The first half is especially sluggish and it isn't until about the 40-minute mark that the action kicks in. Even when it does kick in, it isn't especially sensational stuff (the whole 'battle in the city streets' thing has been done to death). If he'd spent as much attention to punching up the storyline, and trimming the fat, as he did fine-tuning the performances of his awesome cast (Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges also shine), Favreau might've had a 'Spider-Man' on his hands (Clint Morris).
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