The delightful and well-­crafted “Iron Man,” based on the Marvel Comics franchise, is one of the smartest superhero films to come down the pike in some time.

Robert Downey Jr. again reveals why he is one of the best actors of his generation — allowing himself simultane­ously to be playful and poignant as he adds enormous depth to the title role.

Unlike so many previous big­screen incarnations of a Marvel icon, Downey has carved out his own interpretation of Tony Stark/Iron Man, and yet he delivers on the established premise of the character — so as not to disappoint Iron Man’s legions of fans.

Of course, we don’t see the actor as Iron Man until about a half-hour into the film, when Tony Stark becomes the super­charged flying agent of destruc­tive power — used for good to vanquish evil.

That process helps deliver a contemporary anti-war mes­sage. But thanks to the movie’s packaging as a superhero romp, director Jon Favreau pulls off his pacifist statement in a way that’s bound to be more suc­cessful than any number of recent films touching on Mideast warfare or terrorism.

As we first meet Stark, he’s living a flamboyant, arrogant, over-the-top lifestyle. Heir to a jillionaire American arms manufacturing fortune, he also happens to be a genius inven­tor in his own right. On a trip to Afghanistan to demonstrate his latest uber-weapon for U.S. forces, Stark is kidnapped by terrorists presumably modeled after Taliban-style revolution­aries.

After imprisoning Stark in a deep cave, the anti-American terrorist leader tells him he can win his freedom in exchange for developing a powerful rock­et for them. Oh, yes, and our hero is also connected to a bomb to discourage any thought of escape while a weird kind of electronic disc implant­ed in his chest keeps him alive. Instead of crafting a bomb­bearing missile for his captors, he builds a somewhat crude — yet effective — metal suit, infused with all kinds of power­ful weapons and propellants, created to facilitate his escape. He makes quite the explosive departure from deep within their mountain fortress, in just one of many spectacular exam­ples of artful special effects used in this film.

When he returns to America, where he’s hailed as a hero, Stark sets out to change his company’s direction from mili­tary procurement to global improvement.

That sets him on a collision course with Obadiah Stane (played by a shaved-headed Jeff Bridges), Stark’s father’s protege who nurtured the young Tony and helped build the family firm into the world’s most powerful “agent of death.” Almost unrecognizable in the role, Bridges gives a delicious­ly evil performance and holds his own against Downey’s screen-dominating presence.

“Iron Man” is simply great escapism. It completely deserves to be the first major blockbuster of the summer.

<i> “Iron Man” — Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Jon Favreau. Running time: 126 minutes. Classified: PG-13 (for some intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence, and brief sugges­tive content). Rated: Four stars.</i>

<b>Ann Hornaday
The Washington Post</b>
As “Iron Man” opens, with Robert Downey Jr. nursing a drink and talking a mile a minute in the back of a Humvee racing through the dunes of Kunar province, he’s greeted with whoops of approval by the audience long before he dons the red and gold metal suit of his character’s super­heroic avatar. But those whoops are quickly squelched when “ Iron Man” gets down to the business of creation myth, which here is shifted from Cold War­era Vietnam to Bush Doctrine-era Afghanistan. For at least a half-hour, the film is veritably action-free, as the badly injured Tony Stark (Downey) is taken prisoner by a warlord who orders him to build a state-of-the-art weapon. Instead, Stark builds a suit of iron, the better to bust out of the cave and give his enemies a beat-down.

Toggling between Stark’s impish goatee and Iron Man’s full-metal body condom, and amid so many generic fireballs, kill shots and earsplitting thumps, bumps and crunches, the film finally collapses under its own weight. It’s possible to see a decent franchise in “Iron Man” with Downey at its troubled center; the key is getting rid of the scrap metal.