This is not a review. I can't very well review a movie I haven't seen and don't intend to see until I can do so for free, in my own living room, and maybe not even then if I can't spare the time. I got what I "know" about it (and the title) as hearsay, from Antiwar.com, of which I'm a near-daily reader.

But then, many people make their entertainment decisions from third-party reviews.

I understand the 1962 origin of Iron Man, a Cold War superhero if ever there was one, has been updated for the movie. Originally, it took place in Vietnam. Now, the location is Afghanistan. However, the behavior of Tony Stark's captors remains pretty much the same. And Tony himself remains a member in good standing of what outgoing President Eisenhower, himself an authentic war hero, had recently dubbed The Military-Industrial Complex.

But originally, it "rang truer" than (I gather) it does today. It was perfectly plausible that the Commies were mistreating Tony and trying to force him to use his genius in their service. That's what Commies did. They were like Nazis that way, at least in popular fiction. And we can hardly expect a 12-cent comic book to undertake the uphill battle of promoting a more balanced view of the realities of modern war, when everybody already knew what the enemy was like.

Today, however, it's Americans who mistreat prisoners — and everyone on Earth knows it. Even popular fiction reinforces that knowledge. You're familiar with Jack Bauer?

Commies may still do it too, assuming there are any left. But Afghan "terrorists" have never been known to exibit the behavior that made Iron Man come to be. To the contrary, resistors to the occupation of that country have often been the victims of such behavior.

Hence the title — Irony Man. Sounds to me like the movie is too flawed, at its very core, to justify any amount of money, or the effort of driving to a theatre. Network broadcast TV is probably the way to see it. But I won't know for sure until it gets there, will I?

— DDM