Is silly but great, among the very best of the recent crop of comic-derived movies. It’s not going to win any oscars, but the visual effects are well executed, the plot doesn’t stray out of sight of plausibility, there’s plenty of slick dialogue and most of the characters are believable and human, not impossibly saintly or outrageously evil. The glaring exception is the antagonistic terrorist cell who look like al-Qaeda but are apparently fully international and simply bent on destroying everything in sight. There are many valid reasons not to name a real group, and there’s good precedent for crazy terror organisations in films, so perhaps I should stop worrying about the motivation and politics of the guy in fatigues with an Arabic accent (and holding an RPG) and simple enjoy the explosions. But I worry that US foreign policy operates the same way.
Robert Downey Jr is excellent in the lead role, he does get to have a lot of fun but I think he was an good choice for the role – many people would have played the part too straight and lost some of the humour, and plenty of others would have turned the film into a farce. He comes close a few times, but it’s bearable.
Also, stay until the very end.
