Ancient Logic

First, and I think you should keep this in mind, Iron Man is a fun action movie directed by guy, Sean Black, well-known for fun action movies (Lethal Weapon being the prime example). It has a pleasingly asymmetrical plot, lots of impressive SFX, and veritable police line-up of despicable villains. It doesn't do anything particularly new and its big "twist" is fairly low-key. As a matter of fact, the entire movie seems like an elaborate exercise in establishing the proper scale of an action movie. Right off the bat, Tony Stark (played with with a bit more roiling pathology than his last time out in the Avengers) listens calmly as his friend and fellow exoskeleton pilot Col. James Rhodes explains a series of bombings ascribed to an arch-terrorist The Mandarin. Stark suggests the problem is one for the President and the military rather than the Avengers and the Shield Organization. The suggestion here is that Iron Man is concerned with threats of a truly global scale, ...