jive: (Slang) deceptive, exaggerated, or meaningless talk: "Don't give me any of that jive!"
Mostly movie reviews and cinema related.
Do visit Mahabore's Mumblings at http://mahabore.wordpress.com for my non-movie related writing.
Now this was one superhero character about whom I had barely heard about, let alone read the actual comic itself before the movie was announced. The fact that it starred Robert Downey Jr., who in my opinion is one of the most offbeat actors around nowadays (well, with the exception of Johnny Depp perhaps) made this movie all the more interesting. After all how can any fan of superhero movies not fall for the premise of a flying man in an iron suit. To me, the whole concept reminded me of the Giant Robot television series of which I was a big fan of during the Black and White Doordarshan days.
In any case, by the time I caught Iron Man, it had already done its rounds of being the biggest blockbuster of the 2008 summer till then, and believe it or not, I actually caught it only after I actually watched ‘The Incredible Hulk’. In any case, my expectations were sky high from this movie even before I got around to actually watching it. And believe me, this did not disappoint.
Tony Stark, billionaire industrialist and master engineer, who doubles up as somebody who has scant respect for time or money and to add to all this is an incurable womanizer, is in Afghanistan for a sales pitch of his latest Jericho missile which he intends to sell to the US Army. He gets caught by a gang of militants who call themselves the ‘Ten Rings’ and this kidnapping changes his life forever, both literally and figuratively.
In the process of preventing the shrapnel from choking his artery, he develops and uses an electromagnetic device which keeps his arteries clean, and while in captivity he realizes that his weapons are being used by both sides, the good and the bad. He then decides to get to the root of the matter, but then faces the small issue of evading his captors and getting back home. He then builds an armored suit capable of being reasonably useful in short-term offensive strategies as well and gets back home.
What unfolds in the rest of the movie is something to be seen and not talked about here. Suffice to say that this movie is peppered (pun intended) with enough thrills, chills, action sequences, and overall all the fun elements that make for a Hollywood superhero blockbuster. What however sets this movie apart from others in the genre is the fact that this delves into how and why Tony Stark actually goes ahead and becomes the Iron Man. This movie is more like ‘The Incredible Hulk’ which once again chronicles the gradual transformation of Bruce Banner into the Hulk.
And to me, the sheer brilliance of the director Jon Favreau and his team lies in the fact that although the process of Tony Stark reforming takes time, the corresponding screen-time does not get too boring. It probably has to do with the fact that Robert Downey Jr. is a master at depicting conflicted emotions and depicting a person who is trying hard to kill the demons inside his head.
The romantic angle with Ms Pepper Potts, Stark’s secretary works well for the movie, once again primarily due to the brilliant casting of Gwyneth Paltrow in this role. She brings that whiff of fresh air to this otherwise glamor starved movie. All in all, a must-watch movie for all die-hard action movie fans. The action sequences will leave you waiting for the second installment of this franchise.
Regular readers of the blog will remember that I was quite eagerly looking forward to catching "Watchmen" when it hit the silver screen, and man, did it live up to my expectations or what. Moving away from the norm of pitching the good guys versus the bad guys, this is one superhero movie which goes down the less taken path of exploring the inherent difficulties of being superheroes, ordinary peoples' perceptions of them, how society reacts to them, their regular lives, and the such. And this to me is what sets Watchmen apart from most other superhero movies that I have seen, with a few exceptions of course.
The opening credits of the movie chronicles the rise of the Minutemen, a group of vigilantes who came together to "finish what the law couldn't" and their subsequent demise due to violent deaths or insanity. It also shows how decades later, the Watchmen are formed and are involved in various historical events such as JFK's assassination, Vietnam war and how the Watchmen prove to be the decisive factor there. Richard Nixon, US President during the 1980s however outlaws superheroes and all but 3 of them are retired. 2 of them, Dr Manhattan and the Comedian are operating under government sanction, and the masked Rorschach who remains active illegally.
The movie begins with the sequence where the Comedian is killed, and Rorschach sets out to warn the other Watchmen of a conspiracy to eliminate all of them. When Dr Manhattan, who now lives with his lover The Silk Spectre disbelieves him, and the Nite Owl doesn't quite take him too seriously, Rorschach realizes that he is probably the only one who seriously believes in this theory of his.
As events unfold, Dr Manhattan is publicly accused of having given cancers to his former girlfriend and former colleagues, which forces him into exile on Mars. This provides the Soviet Union the impetus to invade Afghanistan, thus prompting escalation of nuclear tensions between the US and the USSR. What happens forth forms the rest of the movie.
While the above in itself can be called a 'nutshell review' of the movie, this is one movie which has to be seen at least 2 or 3 times to get the full import of. Notwithstanding the fact that this is an adaptation of a seminal comic book series of the same name by Alan Moore, stand-alone the movie is a work of art in itself. I am not even talking about the graphics and the CGI parts, which are well, present in almost every action movie today, but the handling of the subject and the script by Zack Snyder gives us a glimpse into the simmering genius that this guy actually is. The careful handling of the Comedian's character (who by the way turns out to be something that most of us realize he isn't), and the brutally truthful character of Rorschach when he is unmasked and the sequence in which he describes his origins, make for the most fascinating sequences in the movie.
To me, one put off about this movie was the fact that it tries to merge almost 4-5 parallel stories together in a playing time of barely 160 odd minutes, which means that the director has taken some liberties with the original storyline. But then, if you are making a Hollywood Summer Blockbuster, and more so, one that is so heavily anticipated, I guess you have to take some liberties.
All said and done, this movie is a must watch for any serious cinema afficionado, more so if you enjoy 'serious superhero' movies which delve deep into the superhero psyche so to say.
Now this was one superhero character about whom I had barely heard about, let alone read the actual comic itself before the movie was announced. The fact that it starred Robert Downey Jr., who in my opinion is one of the most offbeat actors around nowadays (well, with the exception of Johnny Depp perhaps) made this movie all the more interesting. After all how can any fan of superhero movies not fall for the premise of a flying man in an iron suit. To me, the whole concept reminded me of the Giant Robot television series of which I was a big fan of during the Black and White Doordarshan days. 
