| Film Review |
|
|
| Written by Gerry Hill | |
|
Venue: Cine 3, Ster-Kinekor Maerua Mall
Film: IRON MAN Director: Jon Favreau Screenplay: Mark Fergus; Hawk Ostby Players: Robert Downey Junior, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Cuba Gooding Junior Genre: Action; comic book adventure; comedy Rating: **** As another Marvel Comic hero hits the screen, it is good to see that the genre is developing into an art form, not only with clever dialogue and intelligent plotlines but also in terms of characterization, taking the hero beyond the comic book two-dimensional realm. Robert Downey Junior has made Iron Man his own; in the same way that Christian Bale has stamped a soul on Batman and Tobey Maguire has captured the alter ego of Spiderman.
A couple of clichéd situations cannot be avoided. Like
Batman, Tony Stark (Downey Jnr) is a rich dilettante who ostensibly
runs his father’s company but is so busy quaffing vodka martinis (with
extra olives) and attending benefits that he really neglects the
activities of his stoical Executive Chairman, Obediah Stane (Bridges)
who is convincingly charming and competent on the surface and pure evil
underneath. Stark Weapons Industry speaks for itself, which is, of
course, hovering on the brink of the CIA, the American Military, and a
special unit named SHIELD, an acronym for something to do with home
security.
Names are cutely significant: Stark’s faithful, modest (even humble) assistant is Pepper Potts (Paltrow) whose face is symbolically sprinkled with freckles. Stark is plagued by a journalist from Vanity Magazine called Christine Everhart, indicative of her attitude to the job. She is prepared to do anything to prostitute herself for a story and has a hard line approach to the weapons industry. When Tony airily explains his lateness for a Press Conference the irony of his throwaway line, “I got caught doing a piece for Vanity Fair” is not lost on an audience who has watched them both in action. Stark is witty, quick, judgmental, cynical but is seen to have a ‘soft, feminine side’. When his life is saved in Afghanistan he is given a mechanical magnetic device to save his heart, which glows eerily, even through a tee shirt. When he replaces the device with a superior model, once back in the USA, Assistant Potts has the original made into a table decoration, engraved with the words, “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart”: needless to say, the model heart saves his life at the climax of the action, though he has to crawl painstakingly across his laboratory floor to retrieve it. Tony Stark undergoes a transformation; in the same way that Batman forfeits the easy life for a nobler, moral purpose. Initially, Stark asks glibly, “Is it better to be feared or respected? Is it too much to ask for both?” After the transformation, when he sees his weapons of destruction in the wrong hands and used against innocent civilians and Americans, he creates ‘Iron Man’, a red-tinted Titanium monster, which is capable of turbine, thrust into the stratosphere and issuing napalm jets of fire from the metallic hands. There are various other mechanical features, which are demonstrated for the audience. Most impressively, however, it is a beautiful creation of gleaming, streamlined power, used only for the good. Much of the film, in fact, is not devoted to plotline, which details the fight between good and evil, but to the development of character and the trials and errors of developing Iron Man in the secret laboratory. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|