Solid acting performances flesh out ‘Iron Man’ action

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

“Iron Man” certainly gets the job done in terms of start-of-summer blockbuster bang-bang.

With its ironclad superhero zooming through the stratosphere with rockets in his shoes, death rays zapping from his hands and an eerie bluish glow beaming from his eyes, he’s a fanboy’s dream come true.

The special-effects folks went all out to turn the Marvel comic superhero into a cross between RoboCop and Optimus Prime, ungainly but still very cool as he clanks and swoops and causes stuff to blow up real good.

But “Iron Man” is about much more than the hardware. This hero is much more than an empty armored suit. Robert Downey Jr. is in top form playing Tony Stark, the man in the metal. As fans of the comic know, Stark is a gazillionaire weapons designer with a taste for the high life who suffers a grievous injury that terribly damages his heart. Genius inventor that he is, he cobbles up a nuclear-powered gizmo that keeps his damaged ticker ticking. For good measure, he invents the Iron Man suit so that he can bash the bad guys who nearly killed him and any other evildoers who might need some super-strength sorting out.

Downey gives this guy with the bad heart a whole lot of heart, and soul. He plays the part with an insouciance and sense of humor that’s extremely appealing.

At the start, Stark is an egotist whose elevated opinion of himself would make him insufferable if Downey didn’t play him with just the right measure of sly self-mockery and a sense of quiet glee. It’s good to be a king of the world of megabucks business, with beautiful women hanging on you like Christmas tree ornaments.

Self-mockery enters the picture in sequences where he flight-tests the suit, often with painful results. Director Jon Favreau (“Elf,” “Zathura”) and a quartet of credited screenwriters send Stark crashing comically to Earth time and again. After each rocket-powered face-plant, he pluckily picks himself back up, brushing off bits of wreckage, and gets on with business. His armor may be dented but his confidence rarely is.

He has a moral awakening after nearly being killed by one of his own weapons. As he re-evaluates his role as an arms merchant, his character deepens, and Downey’s performance grows even more textured.

With a rakish goatee and a sardonic attitude, Stark exudes a sense that he’s bulletproof. That sense is shredded early in the picture when real bullets start to fly in the desert of Afghanistan where an insurgent band ambushes his military convoy and takes him prisoner.

With his life hanging by a thread, they threaten to finish him off unless he makes a mega­lethal missile for them. He makes an Iron Man suit instead and crashes out of the dungeon where he’s being held captive.

Time out.

That sequence of events does follow the Marvel origin story, but it sure is hard to swallow given that he builds the thing while badly wounded and under 24/7 video surveillance. Advice to audience: Swallow it. This is, after all, a movie based on a comic book. Major suspension of disbelief required.

“Iron Man’s” makers have surrounded Downey with a strong supporting cast. Gwyneth Paltrow brings a carefully balanced blend of professional cool and suppressed romantic warmth to the role of Pepper Potts, Stark’s ultracompetent personal assistant who has a thing (well-restrained) for her handsome boss.

Think: Miss Moneypenny, but in a haute couture backless dress, and you’ve got the picture.

Better yet is Jeff Bridges, shaved bald and bearded, playing Stark’s longtime business partner Obadiah Stane. He seems like a genial smoothie, but there’s something in Bridges’ manner that suggests menace. The character is considerably altered from the comic, where he’s a baddie from the start. But even to the uninitiated, that name, Stane, signals this guy is likely a no-good.

Also along for the ride is Terrence Howard, who plays Stark’s best friend, Air Force Lt. Colonel James “Rhodey” Rhodes. Unlike the other main players, he acts as though he’s on cruise control, and Rhodes seems like he’s been cut out of cardboard.

“Iron Man” is at its best when its characters are interacting one-on-one without the intrusion of special effects. It’s the well-developed performances of the actors rather than its wowee-zowee hardware battles that are the picture’s greatest strength.