For a fun movie experience put at little bit of Iron into your diet

BOOM!

We’re only a few minutes into the movie and already something has blown up, in this case, an armoured vehicle in a military convoy transporting billionaire industrialist Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) through the Afghanistan desert.

Yet IRON MAN (PG-13 125 mins.) is not just another comic book action movie.

True, this is an adaptation of a Marvel Comics fan favourite and there are tons of firefights, explosions and chase sequences but Stark isn’t your average superhero.

Actually, he doesn’t have super powers at all. He is a mere flesh-and-blood mortal like you and me.

Except we don’t have the smarts to build a suit of armour that can mow down battalions of bad guys and fly at supersonic speeds.

Snappy, literate dialogue is a Marvel trademark and there is plenty of it here (REPORTER: You’ve been called the da Vinci of our time. STARK: That’s ridiculous. I don’t paint) but director Jon Favreau and his squad of screenwriters do more than crack wise. The movie also takes potshots at hawkish types who equate patriotism with shock and awe.

“The day weapons are no longer needed to keep the peace I’ll start making bricks and beams for baby hospitals,” Stark snaps when cornered by a reporter.

The arrogant arms manufacturer has an epiphany (I’ve always wanted to use that word in a review) when he is kidnapped by an Afghan warlord and ordered to duplicate a missile he has developed for his ‘Freedom Line’. Instead he builds the first prototype of the metal suit and uses it to escape the villain’s desert fortress.

Back home in L.A., Stark announces his company will cease production of his death-dealing wizardry and incurs the enmity of bottom line-conscious senior partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

“I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I created to defend and protect them,” Stark tells a press conference. “ And I saw that I had become part of a system that was comfortable with zero accountability. “

Marvel Comics godfather Stan Lee (who created Iron Man in 1963) makes a cameo appearance as a pipe smoking senior Stark mistakes for Hugh Hefner (“You look great, Hef!”) in a crowd scene.

Gwyneth Paltrow is very fetching as Stark’s personal assistant Pepper Potts. Terrence Howard does what he can in a thankless role as Stark buddy Col. James `Rhody`Rhodes. Bridges, bald, bearded and burly, makes a terrific villain.

However, the movie`s secret weapon is Downey Jr. putting his own hip, ironic and idiosyncratic spin on the title role.

Missing a little something from superhero movies Put a little Iron in your viewing diet.

WEB EXTRA: Who said ``It`s not my job to even know what my movies mean. My job is to make them.`` Was it a) Martin Scorsese b) Quentin Tarentino c) Woody Allen or d) Michael Moore. Answer (and more intriguing real-life quotes at cowichannewsleader.com)