Weekly meditations from your humble messenger
Tin
Man, Nuclear Heart
(Iron Man, 5/12/08)
By Nicholas Nicastro
When
Jon Favreau's Iron Man is done cleaning up at the box office,
its negatives should be sealed in a platinum time capsule. As a reflection
of all that is beguiling and all that is absurd about America's vision
of herself, circa Iraq War, the movie is worth more than a few hundred
million bucks. For future historians, it's priceless. Let us count the
ways.
Though he was never as popular as
Spider Man or Batman, Marvel Comics' Iron Man once had a considerable
following among fan boys now old enough to manage media conglomerates.
Far from low-key Peter Parker or Clark Kent, and worlds away from stodgy,
old-money Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark (played here by Robert Downey Jr.)
is a high-tech arms dealer with a keen sense of his own brilliance.
Like a better-kempt Richard Branson, he's filthy rich and a man
of action. He's also not afraid to use his skills to tackle unconventional
problems, like how to hire flight attendants for his private jet who
are willing to perform as pole-dancers (Sexual harassment, boss? What's
that?)
Things go wrong for Tony Stark when he travels to Afghanistan and, in
the course of an attack by a Taliban-ish gang, gets sprayed in the chest
by shrapnel from one of his company's own bombs. Imprisoned in a cave,
he agrees to build missiles for the bad guys. Along the way, he fashions
a miniature artificial heart for himself that requires no re-charging
and no fuel (!) and a totally awesome suit of armor with flame-throwers
and rocket-boosters. (The terrorists are apparently too stupid to be
sure what he's up to.) After using the suit to escape, Stark dedicates
himself and his skill at heavy-metal tailoring to fighting the chaos
fomented his arms sales.
All this may sound a little far-fetched,
but compared to silver surfers and kryptonite, Iron Man is topical
stuff. Despite its racy hero, it's also pretty traditional. Tony Stark
is the old-fashioned American maverick, the lone tinkerer in his garage
who changes everything with a good idea and box of scraps. With his
brilliance he finds a way to literally fly rings around the corporate
Ivy Leaguers who try to copy him. Against the Third World ethnic types
squatting in their caves, Iron Man offers the transcendent promise
of technology—the faith that the right gadget can blow away all
resistance. In this sense, the movie is a $100 million elaboration of
one scene in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, where Indiana
Jones dispatched a nasty Arab swordsman by taking out a gun and shooting
him.
So why is Iron Man entertaining,
maybe even a little bit cool? Some credit is due screenwriters Mark
Fergus and Hawk Ostby, who had a hand in last year's Children of
Men. Director Jon Favreau (who has a cameo here as Stark's chauffeur)
has clearly done his homework about what works and what doesn't in this
genre.
But most of the props have to go
to the man in the metal suit. Downey, by adding uncorrupted privilege
to the mix, manages to top Hugh Jackman's combination of insouciance
and likeability in the X-Men series. You want to root for this
guy because he'll not only let you drive his Lambourghini, he won't
get mad if you puke in it. That Downey is again a major star is not
a surprise: ever since his brilliant turn as Chaplin in Chaplin
(1992), his talent has never been in doubt. The only question has been
whether he'd survive his addictions long enough to realize his potential.
The film's other, minor assets include
a nice turn by Jeff Bridges as a bald corporate shark suggestive of
a shifty (OK, more shifty) Steve Ballmer. It's not clear why Gwyneth
Paltrow took the small role of Stark's personal assistant, Virginia
"Pepper" Potts. As the character of Alfred taught us in Batman,
billionaire loner/superheroes need trustworthy help. To Paltrow's credit,
she looks better in a little black dress than Michael Caine has in years.
©2008 Nicholas Nicastro
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