Jon Favreau is the real deal. The actor-turned-director shows us, with Iron Man, that he has a major talent in exploiting what fundamentally pumps audiences up. An overload of witty banter, special effects that get things just right, and most important of all, way-cool action scenes set to classic heavy metal will entertain even the most prickly critic or unhappy girlfriend. It may not be the best movie of the year, but it’s the one that’ll make you pump your fist and cheer.

The special effects are phenomenal because you never know when reality ends and CGI begins. I remember seeing Favreau at last year’s Comic-Con, where he bragged about a big early action scene being all “in camera” "” meaning everything was done with props, costumes, and sets as opposed to green screens that would have to be rendered much later. That kind of philosophy "” to do as much in camera as possible and then flesh everything out with the necessary CGI "” makes everything so much more believable than anything seen in the Star Wars prequels or even Spider-Man (at least the first one, in which Spidey zipped around the city looking about as realistic as a hand-drawn cartoon).

Not to stress it too much, but the abuse of CGI has always been a big bone of contention with me, so seeing it balanced so perfectly here is already proof enough that Favreau is one of the top commercial directors out there today. Luckily, pretty much everything else in the movie is top-notch as well.

Robert Downey, Jr. stars as Tony Stark, an uber-rich industrialist and inventor who’s content with selling his latest bomb designs to the government and living the life of a wealthy playboy "” think Bruce Wayne, except it’s not just a cover. On a business trip to the Middle East to introduce a new missile to the Air Force, there’s an ambush, and he’s captured by a generic terrorist group and ordered to construct his missile for them.

Slowly realizing that weapons manufacturing is not the type of career that allows one to sleep well at night, Stark escapes by building a giant suit of armor, returns Stateside, and starts honing his design into what will become the Iron Man suit so he can protect the innocent against the very type of weapons he helped build. He’s found a new heart, both figuratively and literally "” thanks to a piece of shrapnel embedded in his heart,