SlingShot

Who knew that the inventor of the Segway was such a badass?!

(2014) Documentary (Moon Avenue) Dean Kamen, Muhtar Kent. Directed by Paul Lazarus

The problems of the world sometimes look so insurmountable that we feel helpless to do anything to remedy them. The truth is however that very often some of the biggest problems are resolved by a single person with the will, the drive and the expertise deciding to take that problem on and solve it.

Dean Kamen isn’t a household name but he should be. He is best known as the inventor of the Segway, the two-wheeled device that is sometimes used in place of walking tours. It is somewhat ironic that the device, which never caught on in the way he had hoped, is what has been up to now his legacy – he has since worked quite tirelessly in the medical field with among other things a portable dialysis device to his credit.

But Kamen isn’t satisfied with helping just a few people – he wants his legacy to be something more notable. As he correctly points out, half of the world’s illnesses are the result of water borne pathogens. If he could figure out a way to clean up the world’s water supply, he could empty half of the world’s hospital beds in a single stroke. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

To successfully do this, he would need to develop a device that is easy to maintain, requires a minimal amount of power and is reasonably compact. All of these are matters of engineering and he and his team at his engineering think tank Deka Technology are very good engineers. So to make a long story short, he succeeded. The device exists. Testing it out in Ghana and Central America, the device proved to be successful.

The issue is getting them to where they’re needed and it is here that he hit his biggest roadblocks. Government agencies were unhelpful as were agencies like the United Nations and the Red Cross. Kamen’s frustration was palpable. What he needed was a distribution system.

Also the founder of the FIRST program and robotics competition which had outgrown its venue, Kamen had sought out a new venue for his competition and struck a deal with Phillips Arena in Atlanta. When he arrived in the Georgia city, he was struck by all the Coca-Cola signs around the arena and the city and was struck by inspiration – what product can be found in virtually every village in the world no matter how remote?

Coke wasn’t just a beverage he realized but also a delivery system. He contacted Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coke who was intrigued with the idea. A bargain was soon struck – if Kamen could produced a certain number of devices, the Company would agree to underwrite the distribution of the devices and transport advisors who would teach the locals how to maintain it. In return, Kamen would invent for them a new soda fountain to replace the one they’d been using for more than half a century. Kamen came up with the Freestyle Coke dispensers, now in use at places like Burger King, Five Guys, AMC Theaters and Pei Wei.

The story is inspiring and it’s hard to believe that we are on the cusp of overcoming this problem – in a few short years the worlds water supply could well be completely cleansed. But equally inspiring is Kamen himself – he is an engaging personality, thoughtful and loquacious. By the film’s end you may well want to go invent something yourself. He also has a puckish sense of humor – he really took to the clapper which filmmakers use to sync the sound and film in the editing process. Throughout the film he claps his hands expertly to start the scene, which became kind of a theme among platinum passholders at the Festival who often “clapped” like Kamen just before a film screened.

While the movie drags a little bit in the middle as Kamen himself is bogged down in the bureaucratic red tape trying to get his invention out to where it is needed, this is a very good documentary that not only explains a major problem the world faces but also its solution which is somewhat rare for a documentary. It isn’t just the story of that problem that is engaging however, but also Kamen himself who keeps the interest of the viewer. That makes this one double threat of a documentary.

REASONS TO GO: Inspirational. Kamen is extremely articulate and likable.

REASONS TO STAY: Drags a little bit in places.

FAMILY VALUES:  Suitable for all ages.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The second film in Florida Film Festival history to take home both the Jury and Audience awards in a single category.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 4/16/14: Rotten Tomatoes: no score yet. Metacritic: no score yet.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: If You Build It

FINAL RATING: 7.5/10

NEXT: The Kill Team

Iron Man 3

Robert Downey Jr. mans the Iron Man customer service phone line.

(2013) Superhero (Disney/Marvel) Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Rebecca Hall, Jon Favreau, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale, Wang Xuequi, Paul Bettany (voice), William Sadler, Miguel Ferrer, Dale Dickey, Shaun Toub, Bill Maher, Joan Rivers, Sarah Burkhardt. Directed by Shane Black

When you’re an iron man, the question is important – is it the suit that makes you, or do you make the suit? That’s the question that Tony Stark (Downey) a.k.a. Iron Man is forced to confront in the third installment of the Marvel Superhero film series.

We begin with a prologue in Switzerland back in the ’90s when Tony Stark was just Tony Stark, the boy wonder engineer who was one of the most brilliant weapons designers on this ol’ planet Earth. He seduces one scientist – Maya Hansen (Hall) – and blows off another, Aldrich Killian (Pearce). These acts will have, as Tony narrates in voice over (which only appears at the beginning and end of the movie) a profound consequence on what is about to happen.

These days, Tony Stark is a mess. He has come back from New York after the alien invasion of The Avengers with nothing less than Post Traumatic Stress Disease. He can’t sleep, spending nights in his workshop building all sorts of new sets of armor (he’s up to his 42nd iteration) and driven into panic attacks when his experiences in New York are discussed – or even when the mere name of the city is mentioned.

Pepper Potts (Paltrow) has moved in and their relationship has become one of the few touchstones of Tony’s chaotic life but even she is frustrated, feeling like he’s slipping away from her. To make matters worse, there’s a terrorist who calls himself the Mandarin (Kingsley) who is setting off bombs all over the world, although they can’t find any bomb fragments to figure out what kind of devices he’s using that set off temperatures of over 3000 degrees.

To make matters worse, Aldrich has shown back up, the head of a think tank called AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) that has made him a wealthy man. No longer the long-haired nebbish geek, he’s confident and good-looking, capturing Pepper’s attention and Stark Head of Security Happy Hogan’s (Favreau) ire. However, Happy is caught up in one of the Mandarin’s explosions at Graumann’s Chinese Theater and is gravely injured.

Now it’s on. Tony goes on TV essentially daring the Mandarin to come get him – and even gives him his address. The Mandarin obliges him, taking out Stark’s Malibu in him just as Dr. Hansen comes to warn him to get out. He manages to save Pepper and Dr. Hansen but is trapped in the rubble which falls into the sea. He is presumed dead.

Of course he’s not; his armor, with a flight plan preset by Jarvis (Law), Tony’s computerized butler/assistant, takes him to Tennessee. He meets a young boy (Simpkins) who idolizes him, alternately helping him get back together even though he has nothing, and setting off new panic attacks. Tony really does need to get together; the Mandarin has plans not only for taking out the President (Sadler) but for perpetuating eternal terrorism and counter-response. Tony is far away from his armor and his friends in the Avengers. He will have to take on the Mandarin with just his intellect and his ingenuity. Will it be enough?

This is the first Iron Man movie not directed by Jon Favreau who still appears as an actor however, which he likened to being a grandfather who gets to play with the baby without having to change its diapers. Newcomer Shane Black had previously worked with Downey on the critically acclaimed but financially unsuccessful Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang as well as having written the Lethal Weapon series. Having already scored big numbers in international box office before even opening in the United States, this movie is poised to become this year’s box office champion and quite possibly the highest grossing film of the Iron Man series.

There’s good reason for it. While the tone has changed somewhat, the movie still retains much of what has made the series so successful – the dynamic special effects, the clever gadgets, Tony Stark’s irreverent attitude and the epic sweep. It also puts a focus squarely on Tony Stark which Favreau also did – and that’s a wise thing. When you have an actor the caliber of Downey, you’re crazy not to take full advantage of him – and Black ain’t crazy.

Stark is one of the most complex, layered characters in all of comics and that has translated to the film version. He’s arrogant, sure – but there’s a vulnerability to him here that is so much more evident than in the first two films. He is battling insecurity – when you encounter a living God and a living legend, it’s easy to develop an inferiority complex. He is terrified of losing the one relationship that matters to him, the only one that has since his father passed. Deep down, Tony is a generous, heroic guy – but he doesn’t have all the social niceties developed. Downey brings all of these aspects to life and integrates them nicely. Tony Stark is as fully realized a character as we’ve ever seen in a superhero movie.

His antagonists are not nearly as well-realized which is often a problem in superhero movies, particularly those that have become franchises. Kingsley has great fun with the Mandarin, giving him a bizarre accent that accents certain syllables (i.e. “teach-urrrrrrr”) that make him sound like a menacing idiot. This is explained late in the movie to my satisfaction however – but it still is a bit off-putting at first. Pearce is an underrated actor who is as versatile as they come. Some critics have huffed that they don’t understand how a snub in an elevator can turn a nerdy scientist type into a psychotic megalomaniac but they must have fallen asleep during the movie as Killian has a soliloquy which partially explains his change – and one gets the sense that his marble bag wasn’t quite full to begin with.

Paltrow hasn’t really gotten to run with the Pepper Potts character much – and she doesn’t get to here although she does have a couple of good scenes, and she does get to don the armor – well, Tony has the armor cover her to protect her as their home is buffeted by rockets and machine gun fire from attack helicopters. Still, the character is the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and she has a mind and a will of her own. She makes a formidable girlfriend for Tony, although that aspect is still yet to be explored fully. Then again, the movie is about the superhero, otherwise it would have been called Pepper Potts 3.

Cheadle and Favreau don’t get much screen time either, although both make the most of what they get. As I mentioned earlier, this is very much a Tony Stark movie even more in a lot of respects than Iron Man, although there are oodles of different armors which all come to play in the climactic battle (the website, which you can reach by clicking on the picture above, has details about some of them). For fans of the comic book, some of the story line borrows from the Extremis storyline although there are some significant changes.

The movie is the longest of the trilogy and might have benefitted from a bit of judicial trimming in the middle third. The final battle, which consists mostly of Tony’s suits flying about battling super soldiers infected with Extremis who are super strong and can shoot fiery breath from their mouths is spectacular but similarly overlong.

The reason to go see this is not just the eye candy however, although there is plenty of that. It’s Downey and a pretty dang well-written script. While I personally think the first Iron Man was better than this on a number of different levels, this one is a slight improvement on Iron Man 2 and while there isn’t a fourth film on the immediate horizon (word comes that Disney is in negotiation with Downey to extend his contract which expired after this film – if not just for future Avengers movies) the credits clearly state that Tony Stark will return. I for one look forward to it.

REASONS TO GO: Terrific action sequences. Explores whether the hero is the suit or in the suit.

REASONS TO STAY: Runs a little too long; could have used a bit of editing.

FAMILY VALUES:  Superhero violence and some sexually suggestive content. Fine for all but the very youngest comic book fans in your household.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The dragon tattoos on Aldrich Killian’s chest are actually drawings of Fin Fang Foom, an Iron Man villain from the comic books.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/9/13: Rotten Tomatoes: 78% positive reviews. Metacritic: 62/100; the movie is getting solid reviews.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Spider-Man 2

FINAL RATING: 7/10

NEXT: Sightseers