Iron Man (2008) Movie Review, Trailer, Film Still and Poster

USA 2008
Director: Jon Favreau
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Jon Favreau, Ahmed Ahmed, Gwyneth Paltrow
Rating: PG-13
Release Date: 30 April 2008
Running Time: 2 hours 1 minute

The Movie Review

Iron Man film still 1


IRON MAN
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You know, it's a wonder to think that there are relatively only a few Superhero movies adapting serious real-life theme. Recalling that those people are superhuman with super abilities, but they only seem to fight vampire, beasts or other fantasy things. It's an excellent idea if some filmmakers decide to borrow the idea from news on TV and/or internet for their storyline or make it as the movie's premise. Iron Man does that and it excels in that. And Iron Man is the perfect figure to solve real-life problems, since it's actually more believable and has bigger probability to be created compared to, say, Spider-man or Superman.

Don't judge a book by its cover, and probably don't judge a superhero by its costume. Tony Stark is a real character, and a fun one. He is a playboy and play boy, irresponsible but smart, thanks to Robert Downey Jr. who makes Tony a likable character and a lively one. As narcissist as he is, it's only Downey's character that deserve to be commended. All the other characters go separate way in the lane of quality. Which means, that no other characters are as characteristic as Tony. But the good thing is, that you kinda rooted for Tony. And highly likely would be expecting a sequel too.

Iron Man revolves around a multi-billionaire weapon typhoon named Tony Stark. He is well known for creating inventive arsenal for the U.S. military and is also famous for being indifferent but easy going. When demonstrating the new weapon his company has created in Afghanistan, Tony is kidnapped by a group who calls themselves as the Ten Rings. A group who doesn't hesitates to even hurt their own people and helpless women and children. With his genius mind, Tony tries to escape by creating the most ultimate weapon that his company even never assembles, the Iron Man.

The story is basically nothing impressive or has twists that could make your eyes open wide and your mouth gape. It's fairly predictable really, who's the bad guy, what's coming up next, how the story unravels. The thing is, from the start you could already feel who's who and what's what. For a film with no twist like this, some points just have to be taken to the extreme. What I'm saying is that the script should exclaim that the enemies of our superhero should be utterly despicable but in the same time appealing (in their own ways) either in the costume or personality department. The only villain of Stark in this entry is a character called Iron Monger, which if you have seen Iron Man, then Iron Monger is not interesting anymore. The bottom line is "what's a superhero to do without a heinous and annoying villain?"

The entire cast delivers the expected good acting capacity, they are major Hollywood actors though, and they're supposed to be good. But Samuel L. Jackson's brief appearance is just downright laughable. When he shows himself -- which could be credited only as Cameo Appearance -- I just gaped and giggled.

However, Iron Man still a great superhero movie and it's definitely 2 hours of money and time worth spending for.