Iron Man - Review

By the end of his film Jon Favreau’s Iron Man is a light and fluffy character, a superhero colored in with bright bits of crayon, but he doesn’t start out that way. Ironically it’s early on in the story when Tony Stark, the man inside the bright red suit, is still a carefree playboy and globe-trotting arms merchant that he has the most edge. It’s there that Favreau’s superhero movie works best, as Stark is captured by a group of terrorists known as the Ten Rings (nod to all you Mandarin fans), injured, and forced to work in a dank cave designing weapons.

Left with no choice Stark sets to work making killing machines as they demand, he just doesn’t make the killing machine his captors expect. Robert Downey Jr. is understated and complex as Stark, slaving away in the dust, working in secret for his own freedom under the threat of death, turning his grave injuries into triumph. Favreau seems to know that this early origin story is indeed the best part of his script, since he lingers on it, spending nearly half of his unexpectedly lengthy film on this well staged and acted setup.

If you’ve seen the trailers then you know that Stark eventually gets out of the cave and you know how he does it. It’s the kind of moment that’s bound to elicit cheers from the audience, and it doesn’t hurt that we know he’s kicking terrorist ass. Once he gets home, Stark sets about re-evaluating his role in selling weapons to the murderers of the world. Deciding he’s had enough of it, he puts his mind to the task of figuring out how to stop it. Tony Stark isn’t just a wealthy arms dealer, he’s beyond brilliant. We believe that this charismatic man, this wealthy inventor with an oversized ego, might really come up with this particular answer. His answer is Iron Man.

It’s there that the movie starts missing beats. We meet Tony Stark’s assistant, the plucky Pepper Potts, played by terribly miscast Gwyneth Paltrow. Their scenes together are agony, and often seem utterly misplaced, as if they belong in an entirely different movie. We meet Stark’s business partner and mentor, Obadiah Stone played by a bald and bearded Jeff Bridges. There’s nothing subtle about Stone, or any of the limply mysterious plot devices surrounding him. You know what he’s up to the minute you see his chrome dome. We meet Stark’s best friend Jim Rhodes, the best character in the film’s supporting cast. His role is limited, but Terrence Howard acquits himself well and leaves us wanting more of Rhodes.

And eventually we meet the movie’s obligatory villain, an uncreative, familiar riff on the notion that every superhero must face his exact opposite and equal. The Hulk must fight the Super Hulk. Superman must fight three Supermen. Iron Man must fight the Super Iron Man. It’s not very creative, and their final fight leaves something to be desired.

The problems are all in the second half of the movie, where Iron Man stops being different and settles for being ordinary and at times even silly. It becomes a well put together, well polished, but very standard, paint by numbers superhero origin story. There are no surprises, and even while it remains immensely entertaining that’s somewhat disappointing after the first half of the film where we sit down and get to know a man who describes himself as a merchant of death. I wanted to see how such an obvious villain becomes a hero, and the answer is apparently that someone simply flips a switch in the script.

Yet I don’t want to sound like I’m down on this movie. Iron Man is a lot of fun, especially for a superhero origin story, since they so often end up going awry. While I wasn’t blown away by the final battle between Iron Man and the film’s baddie, there are other great action sequences. Unlike most superheroes, Iron Man isn’t about stopping petty criminals or stalking city streets. His mission is global, and his big coming out party happens in a dusty Afghanistan village, saving villagers and farmers… where absolutely no one is looking. It’s the best action sequence in the entire film, and the place where you’ll want to cheer, even though there’s no over muscled robot for Iron Man to face off against.

It’s also refreshing to see a superhero flick in which the hero isn’t some angsty teenager or a borderline underwear model. Tony Stark is a mature man, with deep rooted flaws. Unfortunately, Favreau’s movie chooses to ignore most of them when things really get moving. My hope is that with this as a setup, we’ll get more of the screwed up egomaniac lurking inside Tony Stark’s helmet, and maybe even a more worthy, creative villain as well. The film is filled with all sorts of geeky references hinting at things to come. Iron Man is good enough that you’ll look forward to seeing them brought to fruition in whatever sequels drop from this tree.

Jumper - Review

Jumper takes a pretty cool sci-fi idea, and doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with it. On the surface it should be a stronger film. Everything’s there, but director Doug Liman, helming his first film since 2005’s success Mr. & Mrs. Smith, never puts all the pieces together.

Hayden Christensen stars as David Rice, a boy from a single parent, broken home who at the age of 15, discovers he has the ability to instantaneously teleport himself any place he can visualize. David uses his ability to teleport himself away from his father, and years later we catch up with him as a young adult. He’s used his abilities to make himself rich, and he lives a solitary life of leisure, teleporting from his couch to the refrigerator, and from the refrigerator to Egypt where he has lunch sitting on the head of the Sphinx. Distance means nothing to him, and he appears content to go on skulking around the world sleeping with women in different countries and having the kind of good time we all wish we could have.

Of course nothing that good lasts forever, and it’s not long before David is discovered with a secret organization whose sole purpose is to hunt down and murder “jumpers” (their term for people with his abilities). After narrowly escaping his first violent encounter with the nameless organization’s top operative Roland (Samuel L. Jackson with white paint on his head), David runs home, gets the girl (Rachel Bilson) so he can put her in extreme danger, and then joins forces with a fellow jumper to kick some secret organization ass.

The problem with all of this is that Liman never stops to make any sense of it. We get a good feel for David, but never any notion of who or what this secret group is, why they’re attacking him, or how they’re able to find him in the first place. Most of what happens in the film happens simply because it’s written that way. It’s almost as if the movie needed to be longer. It touches on too many different subplots and never really resolves any of them. The movie sets itself off on a certain path, and that path leads absolutely nowhere. And so what could have been an interesting science fiction adventure ends up as a fun, but ultimately unsatisfying adventure flick.

Jumper is fun though, and maybe that’s enough to justify seeing it. Some of the action sequences are moderately thrilling, even if they don’t seem to really mean anything. Samuel L. Jackson is wasted, but the teleportation effects are cool and Hayden is adequate as a spoiled man-child turned pseudo-hero. It’s an empty special effects flick which had the potential to be better than it is, but it's so riddled with plot holes that it never musters up the mental energy to actually be better. Sometimes thrilling, occasionally confounding, Jumper is a great concept which seems to only have half of a script, cut up into bits and pieces.

Resurrecting The Champ - Review

When is a boxing movie not a boxing movie? When it’s actually about coming to terms with the deep-seated abandonment and inferiority complex issues you have with your derelict father. But of course, that’s only when it’s not also about the pitfalls of maintaining journalistic integrity while trying to become as prominent a reporter as the aforementioned father figure. That’s not to say that all of the above would make for a bad movie, it just means don’t believe the poster if it makes it look like another Rocky Balboa.

Erik Kernan Jr. (Josh Hartnett) is a sports journalist who spends his days and nights covering the stuff that fills in pages five and six of the Denver Times sports section. He lives in the shadow of his father, a man who took off when Erik was young to become one the most renowned boxing reporters of his day. To further complicate matters his marriage is beginning to crumble and he lies to his son to make him think he’s a better man than he really is. He’s a guy in need of a either a miracle or a therapist.

Fortunately there are miracles to be found if you know what dark Denver alleys to walk down. Kernan’s particular brand of angel is a homeless man whom everyone calls “Champ” (Samuel L. Jackson). One night while walking home from covering a match, Kernan intervenes in a fight between Champ and few drunken partiers out to take advantage of the old man who claims to be near legendary boxer Battling Bob Satterfield. It’s a suspicious claim since Satterfield was proclaimed dead decades ago. Kernan cautiously develops a relationship with the man and, believing Champ’s story that he is indeed Satterfield, sets out to write the article that just might save his career, his marriage, his relationship with his son, and give him the boost he needs to live up to his famous last name.

As Champ unfolds his amazing life story to Kernan, the already heavily burdened plot takes on another load in the form of Satterfield’s own tragic existence. There are plenty of poetic parallels between the two men’s lives and Champ’s life lessons offer Kernan the opportunity to recognize and maybe even correct some of his own mistakes before they take the same tolls on him. When Kernan’s spectacular article turns him into a celebrity overnight, things just couldn’t be any better. But it’s a reality ready to shatter like a boxer’s glass jaw when doubts are raised over whether or not Champ is who he says he is and Kernan’s integrity is brought into question.

There is a lot going on in Resurrecting The Champ; maybe too much for its own good. And yet, for all the emotional baggage flying around the movie still carves out a story that works, if only because its cast does such a phenomenal job.

Hartnett carries the mantle of an emotionally battered man well enough in his own scenes, but he pales in the presence of Jackson’s Champ. Jackson’s transformation into an old man who “isn’t a bum, just homeless” and he somehow manages to make even the most trite and pedantic monologue feel like pearls of grandfatherly wisdom. Even though Hartnett’s character is at the heart of the story, he comes across as playing a supporting role to Jackson who does a far better job capturing his characters’ tragedies and triumphs.

Even if Hartnett comes across as second banana, he’s in good company. Alan Alda, Teri Hatcher, Peter Coyote, Rachel Nichols and Dakota Goyo (who charmingly plays Kernan’s six-year-old son) all add wonderful depth to the film despite the thin lines they're forced to deliver.

An hour and a half long movie trapped in a two hour running time, Resurrecting the Champ’s key problem is that it tries too hard to pack in too much. The film (which is loosely based on a true story) sometimes feels like the writers had a wheel-o’-plot-points which they spun at the beginning of each new scene to decide which of many struggles their protagonist was going to have to deal with next. And yet over-burdened as it may be, it’s still a good film, even if it isn't much of a boxing flick.