Iron Man: Join in the Fun

Duration: 1hr 50 minutes

Genre: Comic-Book Action-Adventure

Directed by: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges

Another one from Marvel stable, and another fantastic rollercoster ride. Iron Man is sheer fun, all through. The plot is simple, but the treatment is grand. The movie starts off with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), the multi-billionaire head of Stark Industries, the premier manufacturer of hitech weapons. Stark also has a pretty secretary, Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltow). Tony Stark is also a top-notch R&D scientist. He lands in Bagram (Afghanistan) to demonstrate his new-breed missiles , which could smoke out terrorists from their hides. Stark proudly claims that this weapon is indeed going to make world safer, only to regret it later. The demo is perfect, but not his ride back. Terrorists attack the convoy and Stark wakes up in a dark cave. And with what...a contraption embedded in his chest to prvent the sharpnels from piercing his heart. And who did that...another felllow prisoner.

Well aware of Stark's capabilities, Pashto and Urdu spreaking terrorists (could you ever imagine that you would get to hear dialgues such as "In kutto pe nazar rakhna" in a mainstream Hollywood movie!) ask him to come up with the missile right there in the captivity. After initial refusal, Stark agrees but only to work on an entirely different thing...Yes! The Iron Man suite. With the help of fellow prisoner, Stark blasts his way out of the cave, before destroying all the ammunition --consisting mostly of high-class weapons from his company that were now property of terrorists.

Stark comes home, and announces at his home-return pressconference that Stark Industries would shut down the production of all the weapons, which were being used against US Army by terrorists, only to be shooed away and kept out of public view by partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Stark, the nerd, and now an anti-war protagianist, prepares a much-advanced version of the Iron Man suite. Things take strange turns, when Stark discovers further disturbing truths about the operations of Stark Industries, with her only confidante being Papper. His realization of protecting innocent lives takes him to Afghanistan to give terrorists a taste of their own medicine, but he has his biggest adversary back hom in US. The Good triumphs over the Evil, with enough scope for the Evil to rise from the ashes gain and again be quashed by the Good. Yes, I am talking about a sequel, folks...set for April 2010.

The movie has several things working in its favor. Robert Downey Jr. might not sound like an ultimate superhero stuff, but he essays the role of the Iron Man to the hilt. He is as effortless in being a spoil, aloof rich man as he is being the saviour of the world. Special affects are eyeball-catching stuff. Especially watch out for the sequence where Iron Man flies with two fighter planes trying to bring him down. Escaping rockets and missiles ready to rip him part, Stark is on th phone with his friend from US Airforce, who suspects the unidentified flying object to be Stark and calls him up. It's humor and action as never before! Downey also shows his humrous side working with all the geek stuff at his laboratory. Whether he is trying to balance his flight in Iron Man suite or his joyrides up into and outside the atmosphere, he is great fun to watch. The only sore point is that Gwyenth Paltrow does not have much to do in the movie. However, such a movie doesn't give you much choice also, playing a second fiddle to the superhero.

The movie ends with a press conference after all the bedlam comes to an end, and Stark has to calm down all the speculations of the world's press. The parting line from Stark is the killer blow in th movie, and you just keep admiring that line, delivered so in-your-face by Stark, long after you have seen the movie! And yes...just as the credits roll in, it's Black Sabbath's strigs strutting in the background with their iconic hit, Iron Man! Did you say, expected? Heck...so what. It was heady!

To wrap it up, this one's a knockout.