Downey's got personality, all right. "Iron Man" (2008) directed by Jon Favreau, is the first superhero movie of the decade that's wholly carried by its lead actor. His Tony Stark (the human inside the Iron Man suit) is no bespectacled news reporter with the charisma of a wax figure, nor a nerd whose only chance at a girl lies in the heroic act of shooting liquid from his wrists. No, Tony Stark is an enviable guy. He lords over an industrial empire like Richard Branson or Mark Cuban -- a suave playboy who's aware of his genius and cracks good jokes to charm his way out of trouble. Instead of showing up to accept a prestigious award, he'd rather shoot craps at the casino with women and booze. No worries, because right-hand man Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) will be there to take the stage and explain away his absence. Stark couldn't give a hoot, and you get the feeling Downey wouldn't either.
Throughout the plot twists Stark sustains his cocky verve. His company, Stark Industrial, performs a field test of its military weapons in Afghanistan, and Stark jumps right into harm's way, Scotch in hand. Within minutes a group of insurgents ambushes his convoy's jeep and abducts him. Instead of building them a fancy missile as requested, Stark -- a machine himself, kept alive by an electromagnet that repels shrapnel from his vital organs -- secretly constructs a crude metal suit. Out of scrap metal, the whiz kid industrialist has invented Iron Man, a modern Frankenstein. (Never mind that the software and materials Stark and a fellow hostage use have no reason to be in an Afghani cave, something even the movie recognizes, in the words of one character: "Technology. It's always been your Achilles' Heel in this part of the world.")
After returning bruised and battered from captivity in Afghanistan, Stark turns into a latter-day Carnegie, repenting for the misfortune his weaponry has caused. His new mission is to transform his nascent Iron Man technology into an agent for positive change.
Because he's an unusual sort of superhero -- a machine knowingly made by its human alter ego -- Iron Man is more man than iron, and as Stark points out, his creation is cast out of not iron but a gold-titanium alloy. Tony Stark is only suited up for several minutes of screentime; for the rest, he looks like Robert Downey Jr. -- albeit a force just as potent as the machine, shooting devil-may-care quips at those around him. When Iron Man soars into the Los Angeles sky, it's a fully conscious Stark guiding the complex gadgetry from inside the suit. This works in the movie's favor, for it lets Downey's quips shine -- "Yeah, I can fly."
Downey's the best thing about "Iron Man," but that's no slight on the supporting actors. As shifty wingman Obadiah Stane, Jeff Bridges is an excellent, if unpredictable, casting choice. Somewhere beneath the new bald pate and hefty frame is the old Bridges -- I almost didn't recognize him. Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty and assured as Stark's assistant, Pepper Potts. Terrence Howard has the most thankless role of all, but blatant foreshadowing suggests he'll have a bigger role in the two sequels already lined up.
The focus on character doesn't mean that comic book and action movie fans will be disappointed -- there's plenty of computer generated effects as befit a big-budget action picture. The big payoff fight was done better in "Transformers" (2007), but hardly any genre peer is going to trump Michael Bay in sheer grandiosity. The best effects are when Stark builds Iron Man, using slick CAD/CAM technology that allows him to physically manipulate a virtual model around his body and toss the parts into a virtual trash can with the flick of an iPhone-ready finger.
It's surprising but inevitable that viewers will walk out of the theater wondering about a possible geopolitical message. Since Iron Man is an arms dealer by day, how could the whole thing not be an allusion? The Afghani insurgents resemble contemporary Taliban terrorists. Evidently Stark's father had a hand in the invention of the atomic bomb, drawing parallels to the political dangers wrought by Stark's inventions. The good guys even seem to have environmental consciousness: Where Iron Man's adversary's engines cough up thick, gray smoke, his leave clean balls of fire. Yet none of this coagulates into something coherent, and it doesn't try to.
Director Favreau is perhaps best known as an actor ("Swingers," "Friends") and it seems he's more concerned with his excellent cast than any proclamations of importance. For one thing, it's not a safe bet to tread political water when a reported $180 million budget is at stake. The lack of a message probably has more to do with Downey, though. Favreau sets the tone crisp and bouncy to keep up with Downey's snappy delivery, and at that pace, it's hard for anyone to think of anything else.
