Caution. If you go below the cut you may see spoilers….. And this review is comming from someone who didn’t read the comics.
Wow! Can I just say Robert Downey Jr p0wns this movie. He is awesome as Tony Stark. Unrepentant playboy CEO of a weapons company ends up as a POW for 3 months. He has a magnet to his chest to keep shrapnel from exploding his heart. Okay, I call medical bullshit. Yes the electromagnet is plausible to keep shrapnel where it was, but you take away the magnet, even for a second, instant shower of fragments. So therefore no change outs, no struggling to make it to the new heart. But Downey just owns this role.
I would have liked to see more story into Yinsen, but we’ll now never know. And in the middle of a firefight you’re going to sit and have a conversation with a dying man?
Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts. She could have been a stronger character. And really looking at the lines and such she could have been. It was just her acting. It didn’t have that oomph that would have brought her up to perfect. It started off nice with her comment about taking out the trash, but then she sort of faded into the woodwork. She gets to try to kick ass in the end, but she need to put either a little more fire, or a little more steel into the character. She has the lines. She has the action beats, but I never quite believed her. Unlike Downy’s portrail of Tony Stark who I bought from the first second and he never lost it.
I didn’t recognize Jeff Bridges without hair. It took me a while to figure out he was going to be the baddie however. And dealing to both sides of the war. That’s evil. Kind of made me remember Lord of War. Now that was a movie that made me think. I can’t stand Nicholas Cage, but he’s done 2 films which I will always remember Lord of War and The Rock. Just cause they made me think.
One of my favorite lines of the movie. Pepper Potts is talking to a Vanity Fair reporter the morning after the reporter slept with Stark. The reporter said something about Pepper picking up the dry cleaning. Pepper says, “I do whatever Mr. Stark needs done… Including taking out the trash.” Ohhh, low blow, but so needed at that moment.
My most favorite line. Pepper walks in to find Tony arguing with the robotic arms who are trying to pull his crashed and dented suit off. “Let’s be honest, this isn’t the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”
And I love the robotic arms. Tony arguing and asmonishing his robotic lab assistants is just hilarious. There’s one who’s job is fire patrol who just seems to love to hose him. Tony yells at him at one point “If you douse me again and I’m not on fire, I am donating you to city college.” The robotic arm just hangs his head. And then at a few more crashes down the line sprays Tony again even though he’s not on fire. The robotics operators just put so much personality into their movements. It was great.
All in all I’d give it a thumb up.