This was not a movie that compelled me to go to the theater to see it. Either the style of the action hero or the less-than-inspiring trailers prevented me from seeing it, even after one of my friends said how awesome it was. Iron Man is an interesting take on a lesser-known "superhero" of the bionic brand. He has lots of high tech toys and billions at his disposal, but is shocked into action through a personal tragedy of sorts that compels him to take another look at war.

Multi-billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) has a cavalier attitude about war. It is, after all, what he makes all of his money on, since his professional job is to outfit the military with all the latest weaponry. His father had a hand in the atomic bomb and after his unfortunate early death, the company was passed into the hands of Obadiah Stone (Jeff Bridges) until Tony was old enough to take it over. With the help of his perky redheaded assistant, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Tony runs the company in his spare time and spends the rest of it gambling, womanizing, and showing up late to all his press conferences. Then, everything goes kaput. In the middle east to promote his latest series of weapons, the military caravan carrying him across the desert is attacked by the enemy and Tony winds up captured in a cave somewhere. With a bionic heart because his real one gave out, he is told to build the enemy a weapon that will assist them in military domination in that part of the world. Rather than give in, Tony turns his engineering skills to something else -- a fully bionic suit of high-tech armor.

Blasting his way out of captivity, he returns home much chastened over what his weapons of mass destruction can do, but his newly pacifist ideals make him unpopular with the board of his company. Ousting him and continuing the advancement of military weaponry, Tony turns his attention to perfecting his super suit, little realizing that the time will come when he desperately needs to use it. What results is a reasonably good movie that might burn a bit on its more conservative viewers. The condemnation of military weaponry is evident, particularly in the first half, and I found myself wincing more than once -- but at the same time, Tony is not a pacifist. He tons a thousand ton iron suit (it's not really iron, he points out...) and has no qualms about blasting terrorists off the face of the earth. All the same, transforming the big businessmen behind military weaponry into the secondary set of villains was a bit too liberal to sit well with me. Sometimes it's not about money so much as protecting our men and women on the battlefield.

That aside, the movie has its faults but also its strengths. I'm the first to admit that the first thirty minutes or so, even though things are blowing up, is very dull and tends to drag. There are too many shots of Tony building and perfecting and testing his super suit. But once he blows out of the cave and returns home, the movie really gets going and never misses a beat. I liked his interaction with Pepper. The subtle romantic tension was nice, and it had a good build-up to the climax, but a few things were left unresolved (such as: how did he get out of it alive?). The supporting cast was great. It's always fun to see Paltrow out of her usual element, and she makes a very perky, very strong heroine who occasionally puts her foot in her mouth. The CGI is fantastic, some of the most realistic I have seen, and there's nothing else for it but to say that suit is cool. Most of the guys I know would give their front teeth to climb inside one of those bionic suits and blast around the room. I found myself yelling at the screen several times (not in anger, but in excitement or concern) and overall it was a worthwhile way to spend two hours.

Content concerns are mild but do bear mentioning. I didn't notice much profanity, but there was one harsh abuse of Jesus' name. Tony starts out as a self-centered playboy and wastes no time in trading banter with a journalist before getting her into bed. Toward the beginning of the film, we see them making out passionately before rolling out of sight of the camera; the next morning she wakes up alone in his room, and Pepper escorts her out, since Tony has no interest in seeing her further. This misbehavior stops after his experience in the middle east, and turns toward a polite courtship of Pepper that never really takes off, but generates as many sparks as his iron suit. There is a good deal of action-related violence that includes massive explosions, gunfire, traffic accidents, and bionic man against bionic man battles. There was nothing particularly graphic or gruesome, although Pepper does get squeamish over yanking a battery out of Tony's chest and replacing it.

Merely one in a slew of super hero films that came out this summer, Iron Man isn't bad. I can see why most of my friends love it. I'm not sure how I feel about the stereotyped depiction of big businessmen as "evil warmongers," but it was not anti-military and had a basis of personal responsibility, since Tony was forced to take a good look at himself and his accomplishments and decide to do something positive with it. I think a sequel would be even better, now that the suit is established and all the characters are familiar to the audience. It meanders a bit in the beginning, but for the patient viewer is more than rewarding in the end.