'Iron Man'

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BY FRANK LOVECE | Special to Newsday

April 30, 2008

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You'll believe a multinational billionaire industrialist can fly. More importantly, you'll believe his psychological transformation from hedonistic jingoist to repentant humanitarian - albeit one with a heavily armored fighter-jet suit.

It's that fidelity to emotional truth that makes the Marvel superhero saga "Iron Man" the best comic-book adaptation in years.

With pitch-perfect casting and plausibly rendered super-science, director Jon Favreau's action-drama remains faithful to the source material while updating it - and recognizing what's made that material so enduring isn't just the high-tech cool of a man in a metal suit, but the human condition that got him there.

As in the comics, defense contractor/playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is caught in a battlefield explosion while conducting weapons business. Here he's captured by a Middle Eastern warlord (Faran Tahir), Stark is ordered to create a super weapon before the shrapnel working its way toward his heart kills him.

With a fellow captured scientist (Shaun Toub), Stark instead creates a chest-mounted device to stabilize the shrapnel and a metal suit with which he routs his captors.

Stark in the comics used his ever-upgraded armor to fight alien threats and supervillains, remaining an arms manufacturer.

The movie instead tells a story of personal redemption: Stark announces that his company will cease making weapons. This incenses his second-in-command, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), and worries his major-domo, the workaholic "Pepper" Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Stark's best friend and government liaison, Air Force Col. James Rhodes (Terrence Howard), simply sees this as temporary dilettantism. By the time each separately discovers the suit Stark's been building in his Malibu mansion, personal and corporate concerns are about to reach smelting point.

Despite several adrenaline-pumping moments, Favreau and Downey stay focused on the real story - about a man learning to take responsibility for his actions. For all its firepower and CGI slickness, that's what really makes "Iron Man" fly.

IRON MAN (PG-13) Birth of a superhero: Injured arms-maker devises a metal suit/jet/weapons system to keep himself alive and make up for what his products have wrought. Best comic-book adaptation in years. With Robert Downey Jr., Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges. 2:06. Directed by Jon Favreau (sci-fi action and violence, brief suggestive content). Sneak previews Thursday and opens Friday.

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