I am also one who disagrees with this review.
There was *never* a moment where the US was shown as a bad guy – in fact Stark’s whole problem was that he felt responsible for the terrorist killing them using his weapons.
The terrorist were bad guys and the non-terrorist bad guys were, well, bad guys. The good guys were good and they were the US military and Tony Stark. It wasn’t the US govt supplying the weapons, it was the second in command of the company. There was VERY little moral ambiguity there.
The message I took was thus: terrorist are bad evil people. The US military is a bunch of good people, Finally war is bad but sometimes you have to kill the terrorist and when you do so – kill them. That seems about right to me.
I recall the scene after Stark’s transformation where the terrorists are attacking a village using his weapons and had killed many of them. He flies in, kills off most of the terrorist and drags the one leading them out of a building. He throws him on the ground (unarmed) and tells the villagers “He’s all yours” and then flies off – the villagers are slowly surrounding the guy. That most definitely was not “liberal anti-war moral ambiguity” in any way shape and form – those villagers were shown as the “good guys”. No tribunal, no talking, no showing them as “freedom fighters” – the terrorists got what they deserved.
In fact, you will note that the *bad guy* is looking to both make a profit by selling weapons to the enemy and making sure that they have a “balance of power” wherein Tony Stark firmly believes the the US should have that power. His whole problem was the supplying of the terrorists and his weapons killing US soldiers. Plus, though it was never explicitly stated one should note that he asked his military friend to work with him and ended up being part of a US para-military group (SHIELD).
The closest it came to the typical liberal crap was wondering what his father felt over helping to create the atomic bomb. They never really answered one way or another and left it alone.
Be careful that you don’t expect an anti-war message so strongly that only see what you expect too. I too rolled my eyes by the whole “we will quit making weapons” but that was quickly squashed. The movie was, on balance, pro-us and pro-fighting terrorists (though it was based in Afghanistan – no mention of Iraq that I noticed).
