Heavy metal

   Let the summer games begin! "Iron Man" is an admittedly bombastic yet quick-witted and thoughtful entry into the superhero arena.

   The film opens with billionaire industrialist, brainiac inventor and hedonistic playboy Tony Stark showing off a new weapon system to Army brass in Afghanistan. Stark is the military-industrial complex. But when his convoy is attacked and his protectors cut down, a gravely wounded Stark finds himself the hostage of terrorists. Forced to construct a diabolical weapon for their malevolent ends, Stark instead uses his ingenuity and aptitude to fabricate an indestructible suit of armor and escape his captors.

   Back home, Stark realizes that his entire life has been devoted to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction and pledges instead to help those on the receiving end of violence. When he stumbles upon a terrible conspiracy within his own organization to destabilize the balance of global power, Stark upgrades his crude creation, transforming it into an invulnerable robotic suit with which to combat the forces of evil.

   Marvel took a big risk with "Iron Man." A recent string of missteps ensured that "Iron Man" was Marvel's last, best chance for viability. So it came as a shock to many when largely inexperienced actor/director Jon Favreau ("Elf") was announced to direct and Robert Downey Jr., a phenomenal actor by anyone's standards but hardly the stuff of superheroes, was cast as the lead.

   Let all dissent and naysaying cease. "Iron Man" is a solid piece of entertainment.

   Favreau and his writers have updated the Vietnam War-era story, placing it firmly in the center of the war on terror and making Stark's kidnappers Taliban-like insurgents. The alteration is by no means the only change to the "Iron Man" back story, but it, like the others, is organic and respectful of the overarching chronology and mythology.

   Origin stories are notoriously difficult, but "Iron Man" pulls it off admirably. Only the end fails to live up to expectations. I found myself wanting more of the titanic showdown.

   "Iron Man" is a special effects extravaganza. The suit looks magnificent. Iron Man moves with seamless fluidity and palpable heft. The film spends plenty of time with Stark as he literally and figuratively hammers out the technical details that go into its construction. Surprisingly, this often haphazard research and development frames some of the film's funniest moments.

   The cast is terrific. Gwyneth Paltrow co-stars as Stark's personal assistant, Virginia "Pepper" Potts.

   Terrence Howard plays Stark's Air Force colleague, Jim Rhodes. Jeff Bridges shaves his head and sprouts a thick beard for his turn as Obadiah Stane, Stark's business partner with a nefarious secret. And while Bridges obviously relishes his role, chewing through his scenes with a voracious appetite, it is pushing-middle-age hipster Downey who, like Johnny Depp in "Pirates of the Caribbean" or Michael Keaton in "Batman," takes control of a role he has no earthly right inhabiting and turns it into something intrinsically, quintessentially, elementally his.

   "Iron Man's" post-Sept. 11 commentary is muddled, both celebratory and cautionary. Philosophically schizophrenic, "Iron Man" seems to play as a feature-length Air Force recruiting commercial on the one hand - reveling in the good old American knowhow that can create technology that enables soldiers to become superheroes, flying into barely disguised enemy territory and wrecking havoc - while on the other hand bemoaning the rise of the sort of high-tech militarism that arms the world's nasties and decimates the innocent.

   Iron Man, like Batman, is an engaging superhero because he is an everyman. You and I may not have Stark's brains or bucks, but we can identify with a man who fights evil without the benefit of supernatural powers.

   This is what summer popcorn fare should be - escapist filmmaking in the best possible way.


details

Iron Man

Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow, Terrence Howard

Director: Jon Favreau

Playing at: Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cinemark, Tinseltown

Rating: PG-13 (for some intense sequences of scifi action and violence, and brief suggestive content) Running time: 2 hours

B+