The cast, script of ‘Iron Man’ freshens up comic book genre

In theaters

IRON MAN, directed by Jon Favreau, written by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, 126 minutes, rated PG-13.

At its core, Jon Favreau’s “Iron Man” is about one man’s massive mid-life crisis, and all the drama that springs from it.

It goes down like this: While in Afghanistan shucking his company’s latest slew of weapons to U.S. military officials, the cocky, ultra-smart billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr., perfect) is forced to look back upon his life when the Taliban suddenly ambush him with his own weapons.

It doesn’t take Stark long to realize that the U.S. has been selling Stark’s wares to the enemy – and what does that say about his own contributions to the state of the world?

Making matters worse for Stark is that he starts having chest pains – not that that’s a surprise. During the ambush, a bomb blew shrapnel into Stark’s chest, which now threatens his heart. Finally, since no mid-life crisis would be complete without flashy new duds and a swank new relationship, Stark creates a suite of virtually indestructible Iron Man suits that allow him the power of fight and flight, and then he falls for his assistant, Pepper Potts, who is played with cool knowingness by a very good Gwyneth Paltrow.

It’s the culmination of all this (and more) that leaves Stark to decide he needs to do something meaningful with his life, which for him means changing the direction of Stark Industries. At a press conference, he unleashes the surprise that his company will no longer make weapons for the government.

It’s a statement that creates ripples throughout the world, the stock market and most notably within Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges, bald and bearish), who helped to build Stark Industries from its infancy and who isn’t about to let Tony ruin it now.

Without giving any more away, what unfolds is one hugely enjoyable popcorn movie, and not necessarily because of its special effects, which are as seamless as anything audiences enjoyed in last year’s “Transformers.”

For the most part, the movie’s pleasures come from the attention paid to its script, its accomplished performances and the fact that the movie is driven by its characters first, its action second.

About the action. As impressive as it is (watching Stark learn how to fly as Iron Man is a highlight), the reason the movie works as well as it does is for the very reason most good movies work as well as they do – you care about the characters, the plot is involving, the production is polished.

Based on Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway’s script – which itself is based on the Iron Man character Stan Lee helped to create in 1963 in response to the Vietnam War – “Iron Man” finds all involved skirting the typical superhero pitfalls (specifically, teen angst) to break new ground within an otherwise overworked genre. In the process, they’ve come through with one of the freshest, most satisfying outings the medium has seen in awhile.

Grade: A-

On DVD

THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, directed by Julian Schnabel, written by Ronald Harwood, 112 minutes, rated PG-13, in French with English subtitles.

Julian Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” is the moving, real-life story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Almaric), a former editor of the French fashion magazine Elle who, at 43, suffered a debilitating stroke that left him with something called “locked-in syndrome.”

The condition is as devastating as it sounds.

Though Bauby’s mind returned to full capacity upon waking from the coma induced by the stroke, his body was paralyzed. The only exception was his left eye, which became his only tool for communication in the months that followed.

The film is based on Bauby’s own memoir, which was published days before his 1997 death. If it’s the fact that Bauby was able to write a book at all that makes the movie such a testament to the human spirit, then it’s his sometimes sarcastic, other times regretful internal monologue that makes the movie as powerful and as complex as it is.

Over the course of 14 months, Bauby dictated his memoir to Claude (Anne Consigny), a woman who became his closest confidante, by a complex system devised by his speech therapist, Henriette (Marie-Josee Croze).

Meanwhile, Bauby’s life – once a misguided, selfish force that lived large in Paris (as his imagination does now) – doesn’t stop just because his body stopped. It must be reckoned with by those who come to visit. This includes the jilted mother of his three children (Emmanuelle Seigner), as well as a host of friends who hold him in varying levels of esteem, not to mention unwanted jolts of pity.

Bauby’s guilt-ridden girlfriend (Agathe de la Fontaine) visits through a tense telephone call, and his father, beautifully played by Max von Sydow in what should have been an Academy Award-nominated performance, only calls as well. At 92, he is too weak to visit his estranged son, and so all he can do is phone him and tell him how much he loves him, which leads the movie into some rather deep emotional waters.

But never into cheap sentiment. In spite of the rawness the film’s subject and its outcome court, Schnabel wisely didn’t create a weepy – far from it. This is a film about a flawed womanizer with little time for his children who comes to face himself by the vehicle of his own memoir. Bauby wasn’t pleased with what he saw there, but at least he had the courage to look, which allows you to respect the man in ways that make room for forgiveness and, in the end, an unexpected sense of loss.

Grade: A

WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, video podcasts, iTunes portal and archive of hundreds of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.