Iron Man Review

Overall Rating

By far the best film marvel has yet produced; the film is a rare fusion of high quality action and genuinely interesting characters. Actually better than the original comics. If nothing else, stay for the nugget after the credits; it will make your day.

Some of the (otherwise high quality) witticisms on Downey Jr.'s part come off as a bit embarrassing. Some slightly over the top patriotism.

It is generally taken for fact that films, games etc based around a super-hero will never approach the original in quality. This was definitely true in the Hulk movie, and more recently in the butchered Transformers film. Iron man alone is an improvement on the original incarnation of the character (although the first two Blade films were pretty good); augmenting all the best aspects of Tony Stark. He is very much the archetypal "lovable a***ole" that many film leads aspire to be, only this time he actually succeeds. An extremely strong cast all around - especially an uncharacteristically intimidating performance from Jeff Bridges; an actor who previously reminded me of the Big Lebowski and nothing else. Few films these days truly deserve a sequel, but this is definitely one of them (there isn't really any way this could be a one off anyway, short of Hollywood collapsing in on itself).