Iron Man: A Film Review

Iron Man is the latest Marvel Comics super hero to make it to the big screen. The film is filled with interesting, well acted characters and lot of cool action sequences. It also has enough plot holes big enough to fire a cruise missile barrage through.

Tony Stark, played by Robert Downing Jr., is a Howard Hughes-type (albeit less insane than the real man) mogul who is in the business of making weapons. He is handsome, irresponsible, a genius, and a bon vivant without peer. He has such charm that he is able to tell off a female liberal reporter one moment and then bed her the next. Tony Stark is also a patriot, believing that he is doing good (i.e. providing the US military with the tools to fight the War on Terror) by doing well (making lots of money in the process.)

Naturally, this being a Hollywood film, Stark is in for a comeuppance.

The plot holes begin to appear when Stark conducts a test of his latest weapon, an area bombardment missile called the Jericho, in the middle of war torn Afghanistan. One suspects that the military has firing ranges that are closer to Starks's Malibu pad than that. Regardless, if the test is not conducted in Afghanistan there is no story that follows.

While driving back from blowing up a considerable part of a mountain range, Tony Stark is captured by a Taliban-like terrorist group who tortures him into making for them their own version of the Jericho weapon system. Tony Stark also discovers, to his horror, that the terrorists are well armed courtesy of Stark Industries, his own company.

Stark, with the assistance of a captured Afghan engineer, creates a suit of battle armor instead of the missile under the noses of the terrorists and effects his escape. The idea strains credulity just a bit, but this film is based on a comic book after all.

After arriving back in civilization, Stark decides to get out of the weapons business but apparently makes no further effort to find out why his weapons are being used by bad guys. The problem is that providing weapons to terrorists is a felony and, as an owning partner of the company that did it, Stark is liable. It would be in his best interests to find out who is doing this.