by Steve Venegas
There’s something to be said about a man, who through determination and will, is able to overcome an obstacle. Oh, and it helps when you dress up for the fight in one of the highest tech freakin’ suits of armor ever to hit the screen.

Like most super hero movies slated to be the first installation of a trilogy, they story of this summer’s action blockbuster, Iron Man, delves mainly into character. But unlike other origin stories, this one manages to hurdle pitfalls that set the others back.

Taking its direction from the Marvel Ultimate stories about the armored adventurer, the movie opens as Tony Stark falls into the hands of militants in Afghanistan. With the help of his fellow captive/genius scientist, Stark tricks his captors who are creating a WMD for nefarious purposes. Stark co-opts the technology and builds a walking tank and breaks he and his cell-mate out of their cave-side dungeon to freedom.

After the ensuing boomfest, Stark makes it back home with a newfound look. Following his run in with the rebels, he realizes what a blight his company’s weapons dealings have been on the world. He vows to change the nature of his business, and with the help of his assistant Pepper Potts, his military contact, Jim Rhodes, and his newly refined super-suit, tracks down all of his wayward munitions that have fallen into bad ass hands.

But the road isn’t easy. Obadiah Stane, his lifelong mentor and second-in-command of Stark Industries, has other ambitions for the company, and wants to send Iron Man to the scrap heap.

Never throughout the film do you feel like you see the main character abandoning his former self completely and coming out a completely different person. That’s one thing that’s always bugged me about the genre. Once the hero says, “Well, I better be a good guy,” he no longer acts like he used to. All of a sudden he’s a swaggering Dudley do-right and the goofy twerp that he used to be can’t be found anywhere (I’m looking at you Spider Man).

But Tony Stark, played masterfully by Robert Downey Jr., doesn’t suddenly loose his self-obsessed and braggart ways. In fact, instead of being humbled by the experience, he acts just the way you’d expect a billionaire, Richard Branson crossed with George Clooney-type, to behave. He has fun with his new toys and wants make sure that he gets all the attention that he can.

Although this film is dominated by the massive presence of Robert Downey, Jr. as Stark, Gwyneth Paltrow and Terrence Howard do great jobs in their roles. Jeff Bridges is great as Stane. His huge frame casts a long shadow over the comparatively tiny Stark, accentuating the final confrontation, making it that much more dramatic. Oh, and Paltrow does the impossible with her role: she actually comes off as likeable.

If anyone but Marvel, John Favreau, and Robert Downey Jr. were involved with this production, it would have ended up coming off either patronizing or just unlikable. In typical Robert Downey Jr. fashion, he takes a philandering spoiled rich-kid souse and turns him into a charming, endearing anti-hero, which is the core of the character to begin with. Had the creative reigns been taken from the big brains over at the House of Ideas, than we would have ended up with some pretty boy Patrick Demsy kind couche-tard blowing crap up while dropping stink-tastic one-liners, winking at the camera, because that’s what the audience wants, right?

The cgi sequences were seamless and the action scenes were more than satisfying. I never felt like I was watching movie. I forgot that right after the film got started. I did feel like I was watching the best super hero film to date.

Playing: At Theatres All Around Town