I’ve discovered something rather interesting coming out of Hollywood this month. A minor story trend that is at the heart of two very different movies, the Wachowski’s Speed Racer and David Mamet’s Redbelt. Essentially these two movies make the same point in very different ways, that it is better to compete in a sport for the sheer love of the game than compete for a monetary prize. Both films have as villains conglomerates who fix the competitions so that particular people win and are opposed by single heroes who fight to expose the hypocrisy of the business. Personally of the two I prefer Speed Racer’s confusing Tron inspired escapades to Mamet’s thoughtful and thought provoking drama for one simple fact, Speed wants to earn an honest living doing what he loves, while Mamet’s protagonist prefers subjecting a life of quiet destitution on himself and his family rather than sully the good name of martial arts by actually earning money with it. Considering how many people are broke and out of work, I’d rather root for someone’s financial and moral victory rather than just a moral victory that, knowing Mamet, wouldn’t change the status quo anyway.
I’m a little late getting this review up, my computer crashed and it is just now starting to run okay. But enough of the excuses, I went and saw Iron Man last Sunday and it is easily one of the best superhero movies ever made, easily sliding into the top hierarchy alongside such cinematic gems as Superman, Spider-Man, Spider-Man 2, and Batman Begins.
A brief synopsis of the plot, Tony Stark is a genius weapons manufacturer who, while in Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest missile to the military, is attacked and captured by terrorists. Dying from a chest full of shrapnel working towards his heart, he only has a week to live and the terrorists are wanting him to make a version of his new missile for them. Instead he builds a device to keep his heart going and a robotic suit to escape with. Once back home he shuts down the weapons manufacturing wing of his company and works on perfecting his armored suit, only to discover that the original attack on him was ordered by one of his oldest friends, which leads to robotic mano a mano showdown.
Iron Man does something that has been missing from superhero movies since the first Superman, namely a sense of humor about itself. While some films have had some jokes scatter about, the over all tone is still dark, i.e. the Spider-Man, X-Men, and Batman films. But here although the acting and setting are played straight and serious, there is an amusing subtext to a lot of whats going on. A perfect example is a scene where Pepper Potts has to replace the device in Stark’s chest that keeps him alive. It is a brilliant piece of film making that combines funny dialogue to a suspenseful sequence with an erotic subtext.
The acting is all top notch with Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow both give great performances, Howard easily showing his growing frustration with first the playboyish Stark and then with the more responsible Stark, while Paltrow shows a vast range of emotion in a character who is falling in love with her employer, knows it’s a bad idea, and actually manages to get some distance from him.
Of course Robert Downey, Jr. is the big star her, playing the hard partying Stark just right and is fascinating to watch as he gradually moves from walled off indifference toward redemption for his past turning of a blind eye to the flip side of what his weapons making causes. He is helped in part by his own past indiscretions which are always in the back of the viewer’s mind.
And yet as great as Downey is, he is blown off the screen by Jeff Bridges’ villainous Obadiah Stane ( how can you not be a villain with a name like that). He is a gregarious and ingratiating presence until about the two thirds mark, when you see his utterly ruthless true colors start to emerge. His best scene is a monologue given to a paralyzed Downey, where you realize in his mind he isn’t the villain, Downey is. In Stane’s world view he is the hero, working to correct the problems in the world and bring everything back in balance. What really makes it work is some of what he says is hard to argue with. Wow! Relevancy in a comic book movie.
So I highly recommend seeing it. It has action for the action fans, romance for the romance fans, and some intelligent commentary on the state of the world right now and what our place it has been and could become. Plus Stan “The Man” Lee has a cameo as Hugh Hefner(?!?). Something for everyone.
So the big forecast this week from the media and interactive research analyst Edward Woo is that the release of Grand Theft Auto IV will cause Iron Man to tank at the box office because all of the people who would go to see Iron Man will be at home playing GTA IV instead. I feel kind of insulted by this. Once again there is a cliched stereotype branded onto comic book fans by the mainstream media, that they are all fourteen year old geeks who won’t be able to tear themselves away from their game consuls to check out a superhero movie. Never mind the fact that Iron Man has been published for over forty years so that the fan base for the character stretches from teenagers to people contemplating retirement, never mind that it stars a legitimate actor with a solid fan base among older theater goers, and especially never mind that not everyone that reads comic books plays video games…like me. I like movies and I like comic books, but I’m not really into gaming, my wife, The Patient One, likes gaming but really isn’t into comic books, yet we both are looking forward to seeing Iron Man, and neither of us are considered a target demographic, due to our being older than the considered appropriate age group. But that’s not the real kicker from the doom sayers. One of the facts they are using to make this prediction is that Halo 3 came out the same week Ben Stiller’s The Heartbreak Kid debuted and it tanked at the box office, never mind that the movie sucked, or that not everyone is a Ben Stiller fan, it must have been that darn video game. Please! Give me a break! How about people that play GTA games will probably go see Iron Man as well. Want proof? I have a friend who is a GTA fanatic and he is planning on going to see Iron Man several times, oh and he is in his late thirties. Why don’t you crunch them numbers Mr. Woo.
