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The familiar feels fresh in "Iron Man," a snappy superhero movie that plays by the rules of its genre and shakes things up at the same time.
It's practically a commandment of superherodom, for example, that an ordinary person can only become extraordinary after suffering some outlandish accident of fate that bestows special abilities. But the alter ego of Marvel Comics's favorite metalhead, brilliant weapons designer Tony Stark, shapes his own heroic destiny, self-engineering the technology that lets him take up the good fight.
And let's have none of this brooding, almost churlish rejection of society's expectations of heroes. It's not really Tony's style, anyway -- he's got billions in the bank and beautiful women at his beck and call.
After the flippant, roguish playboy endures the spiritually cleansing nightmare of three months' imprisonment by an Afghani warlord, however, he experiences a rather literal change of heart. The new Tony seizes on his heroic potential out of genuine regret for a hitherto callow detachment from the real world consequences of being a dealer in arms and ordnance.
How many moviegoers really relate to heroes who are driven by various resentments, or desires of revenge? Remorse, now that's a motive we can all get behind.
It's a beautiful thing, by the way, to see an actor with the dramatic depth and abundant charisma of Robert Downey Jr. play a role like this. I'm betting the superhero thing is harder than it looks -- remember Val Kilmer in "Batman Forever?" -- and Downey Jr.'s performance carries the movie.
My memory of director Jon Favreau's last film before this one, the outer space adventure "Zathura," is mostly that it was loud. So it's nice to report that Favreau -- who sets up a late-breaking chortle by appearing briefly as one of Tony's bruising bodyguards -- has taken great strides as a filmmaker. His storytelling choices are all good ones, like the perfectly measured length of time spent observing Tony's trial-and-error approach to the superhero necessity of flight.
"Iron Man" has some draggy bits, most of them having to do with the transparently evil machinations of Tony's mentor and business partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). And when Tony becomes a one-man war on terror, the action is so enjoyable that you may wonder why there isn't more of it.
(The depiction of our hero's pre-enlightenment hedonism also yields a few tastelessly silly moments, like when it's revealed that the stewardesses on his private jet have, apparently, rather broad job descriptions.)
Bridges's adversarial arc is standard stuff, but Terrence Howard has several good moments as a military colleague of Tony's, and Gwyneth Paltrow makes a sparkling return to the mainstream as "Pepper" Potts, the keeper of both Tony's schedule and his heart. There's some genuine sizzle between Paltrow and Downey Jr. that makes Tony and Pepper's feisty conversations crackle.
There are a couple of scenes that will remind viewers that iron is a heavy metal, but "Iron Man" is light, fast and fun.
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