Recently At The Cinemas...Iron Man

Plot: Tony Stark is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Shane from misusing his research.-Courtesy of IMDB

Iron Man opens with Robert Downey Jr. cradling a whisky glass. It works both as a nod to the film's origins (Tony Stark has a drinking problem in the comics) and it's star. Iron Man is not the first superhero flick to feature a billionaire playboy using his prodigious mind not to mention enviable fiscal resources to fight crime and right wrongs, but it can lay proud claim to projecting one we can readily connect to.

This is in no way a reflection on Christian Bale's essaying of a similar character in Batman Begins, but more to do with a star's ability to imprint his real life in varying shades onto a screen alter ego.

Christian Bale can do intense in his sleep, but he's not the one with a once boyishly handsome visage now streaked with character lines.

Robert Downey Jr. nails the part simply on the basis of his having lived the life of Stark to a certain degree and his face mirrors that of a life lived larger than most and often on the precipice of free fall. It's almost as though his arrest for drink and drug related offences practically branded the role onto him, searing him with Stark's demons, cauterizing Downey into Stark.

It's what makes Iron Man such delicious viewing, even more than it's skewering of Right Wing policies on Weapons Manufacture.

Yes, we know that Arms Maker Stark undergoes an epiphany of sorts when he is captured to make his own weapons for the very people his "products" are supposed to keep at bay, and knowledge of his company's dubious "double-dipping" to arm both their Government and the "Enemy" with the same set of "toys" only strenghtens his resolve to make and keep the "coolest" one for himself.

And the analogy of a heartless profiteer whose gadget-packed suit of armour is essentially scrap metal without a glowing "ticker" to keep him operational, is anything but subtle.

That the CGI on display (much of it cool) aid rather than overwhelm the story and the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow, for once, actually comes across as endearing with her subtle tap-dance of repressed feelings around her charismatic employer, is mere icing on the cake.

The cake itself, and a rich,creamy and luscious one it is, is Downey Jr, nailing the part with consummate ease, whether he's flooring you with his rat-tat-tat one-liners or convincingly etching the potrayal of a flawed man starting on the road to redemption.

Whether this applies to the actor or the character is immaterial. You want to cheer both of them on.

This Tin Man has Heart.