welcome, infidel!

I love Robert Downey Jr. In a totally non-gay way. But I was a little nervous about going to see this, because I'd heard that there's kind of a political undertone to the movie. Those of us who don't believe that Dick Cheney eats babies tend to find Hollywood's expression of political sentiments to range from jarring to downright offensive, so I had some misgivings about that.

But while the opening of the movie does take place in Afghanistan, and is pretty violent, I did not take that away from it at all. Downey plays Tony Stark, an obscenely rich playboy who owns a weapons company. He is travelling to a war zone to do a weapons demonstration (these are generally done stateside, but ok) and his convoy is ambushed and he is taken prisoner.

He's held in a cave, and is ordered to build a weapon. What he builds instead, as anyone who has seen the trailer knows, is a flying suit. What you're wondering is: how cool is the suit on a scale of one to ten?

The suit goes to 11.

It completely kicks ass. The prototype he builds is kind of like a suit of armor that shoots rockets and flames, which would be cool enough, but the finished model he works on when he gets home can do things that fighter planes can't. (And likely never will).

As for the supposed political undercurrent of the movie, there is a conflict between him and the co-owner of the company (Jeff Bridges, in a very un-Dude role), and it turns out that the weapons company has been engaged in unethical conduct. So Stark (as Iron Man) does some flying around attempting to right the wrongs that have been done without his knowledge. If the movie criticizes anything, it's corporate sleazedom. I have no problem with that.

There's a subplot involving tension between him and his assistant, Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow). Ms. Paltrow, in spite of her recent habit of making idiotic comments to the foreign press, is very likeable here, and I enjoyed her portrayal of the character. I thought she might be irritating. I was wrong.

Overall the movie is nearly flawless for what it is -- a completely kick-ass action movie -- and only drags a bit towards the and as Stark battles his nemesis in a collection of scenes that recalled, more than anything else, that horrible Transformers movie that came out last year.

There's a sex scene early on but I can't remember if there was any nudity (probably not), and it's more comical than erotic. There's plenty of violence but little actual gore. I'd say you could get away with bringing teenagers to this (they've seen worse), but leave small children at home. It will scare the bejeezus out of them.