Iron Man Review & Fantastic Fest Fun Pictures

Tony Starks is a hell bent man obsessed with power and adrenaline in Tony Starks who suddenly gets a does of reality on a trip to Kunar Province in Afghanistan to debut a new missile system dubbed Jericho that can seemingly blow up the horizon. He lives a dashing life of little care as a dominant world weapons dealer. Girls, hard drinks, fast cars and even faster girls, he blazes through them all in one long blur with no real sense of purpose. Whatever good qualities he possesses have been lost in his blinding vision of greedy capitalism and self-centered universe. It takes this one life-changing event in Afghanistan to propel forward the central plot of the movie of how a man rises from his past and inner demons to take on the injustices of the world.

Iron Man heralds in the summer with a giant boom of thundering robot rock that will surely cause audiences to immediately flock to see it again once the end credits start. It features a sensational performance by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, whom might initially seem like an odd choice, but once you see him own this role as a super hero and adrenaline junkie bad boy, you can’t wait to see him in future adventures. A hard drinking socialite with little to no redeeming qualities has rarely been this much fun on the silver screen, well outside of Vince Vaughn in Swingers. His transformation from his vices and illicit past to a robot fist-pounding machine of fury seeking out justice should more than keep fans of the original satisfied. Downey Jr. becomes Tony Stark to the degree it seems he threw out the entire script and ad-libs a performance like Hendrix would Purple Haze in past summers of love. I haven't seen this wildly of a quirky performance by an actor work so damn well since Bill Pullman in Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance.

View pictures from the fun Fantastic Fest screening at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Real flying men in jet packs and more ensue!

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Make no mistake this is not Michael Bay’s Transformers Part Deux, as director Favreau shows how to properly make robotic cinema bliss. He provides the perfect synthesis of cutting, staging and mix between practical and imaginary, while continuing his own filmmaking style of slick textures and dashing characters. While there is certainly CGI in the mix from ILM, director Jon Favreau provides a much more balanced display of it combined with practical effects and Animatronics from San Winston Studios (more on that from Quint at AICN here). He realizes he doesn’t need to constantly cheat with CGI, but to display it only when everything else simply will not work. The visual display when fused with another movie theater jolting sound design by Christopher Boyes (King Kong, Lord of the Rings series) creates one hell of a roaring energetic movie going experience. I’ve rarely seen this intense of a theater shaking sound design compliment the action on screen so well, not only do we see and witness the action going on the screen, but we feel its each and every move.

This independent Marvel production certainly benefits from Favreau at the helm and from crafting a superhero tale that is void of being dead on arrival, like so many of past summers. Favreau who made swingers cool, here helps turn Downey Jr. into an action hero and Stan Lee into Hugh Hefner. He blends a vast array of mainstream entertainment touches of romance for the girls, action thrills for the young, popcorn crunching humor, sci-fi geekdom moments galore, male testosterone in over drive into a film that rarely has a lull and has the beating charm and heart of a great comic book. Its ambitions seem fairly straight forward and perhaps the weakest part of the movie is that it never really has one big action set piece, instead it features several smaller ones. This combined with a bit of a confused off the tracks ending keeps the film from ever hitting its full potential. Though this potential might be being saved for round 2. I loved everything about the character development and rise of Tony Stark to Iron Man, but once we get there, the film doesn't seem as sure to what it wants to do. Even though this uneven aspect of it certainly permeates throughout it, I don't think it completely derails the movie, because they keep entertaining the audience and fans front and center. The ending while wild and loud, was a bit of a whimper for me. I like my action arcs in films to close with a bringing down the house Road Warrior style climax. Which reflects more my taste than anything and a minor gripe at best.

Finally we get a good old-fashioned summer movie that even at its most uneven moments provides us the escape of cinema we crave at this time of the year. If this movie is “just a training mission,” good things certainly await us in future installments, let alone Downey Jr. has just turned himself into one of the coolest male action heroes in cinema. Talk about a comic book film and career revival all in one!

Ghostface Killah is cut out of this version of the film (perhaps he will be on a longer cut on the DVD?).

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Before we embarked on the adventure of the movie and the sandy lands of California and Afghanistan the audience was treated to a dazzling sonic flight of a Iron Man jet pack clone by Jet Pack International. The Alamo Drafthouse put on this amazing show as this real life Iron Man clone flew through the air and over a dazzled and ear holding audience. You thought NASCAR was loud, whew you haven’t heard the sonic boom of Iron Man in person! Mondos Tees Tim and a fan (who just happened to be passing through to see Big Man Japan) of the series that happened to hear they needed someone from the crowd to sing along also treated us to an impromptu singing of the Iron Man theme song. The Lee Greenwood singing of the Star Spangle Banner was also blasted before the movie and an Iron Man costume contest. All these activities provided the perfect energy and atmosphere for going into the film.

Before the film we were treated to a video greeting by Favreau and Downey Jr. (whom made several goofy faces) where they sprinkled good spirited jokes at Harry (AICN) and warmly talked about the vibrant film community of Austin. Favreau also pointed out that he calls the Australian poster of the movie, the exploding vagina poster.

The trailer the Drafthouse picked to play before the movie was the English version of the cult Shaw Brothers film Inframan - you won't believe your eyes, ears and mind. The ultimate in science fiction!