MOVIES: Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)

Standard-issue comic book adaptation, elevated only slightly by the presence of Robert Downey Jr. in the lead role.

Downey is Tony Stark, wealthy playboy and chief developer for the arms manufacturing company founded by his father. While visiting Afghanistan to demonstrate his newest weapon to the soldiers there, he's taken prisoner by local rebels who order him to build one of his missiles for them. (They are apparently very stupid rebels, who don't understand that one needs a factory and high-tech equipment to build such things.)

Instead, Stark builds a crude suit of armor which he uses to escape. The experience brings him to an epiphany in which he realizes that the weapons trade is Evil, and that he must atone for his sins, which he does by perfecting that armored suit -- essentially turning himself into a weapon (a contradiction that the movie never acknowledges, much less deals with).

Downey is very good as Stark, especially in the first part of the movie, when he gets to play the dissolute layabout; after he goes through his transformation and turns into the world's most self-righteous prig, the character is a lot less likable, and even Downey can't do much to salvage him. (And for me, at least, the parallels between Stark's story of redemption and Downey's own career, which have been pounded to death in the movie's publicity campaign, make the movie feel a bit too much like Downey's own personal psychodrama.)

The rest of the cast is made up of talented actors, wasted in cliche roles -- Gwyneth Paltrow as the Girl Friday, Jeff Bridges as the Evil Industrialist (we know he's Evil because he has a shaved head), and Terrence Howard as the Black Best Friend. There are relatively few action sequences for a comic-book movie -- probably a good idea, because every time Stark gets into the Iron Man suit, you lose all of the communicative force of Downey's face -- and they aren't very interesting or original.

There's a brief scene after the credits (and my lord, these are long credits) that makes it clear that a sequel of some sorts is already in the works; it was probably inevitable, given the movie's success, but I can't say I'm excited by the thought.