Gurlyndrobb
While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.
Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Kaydan Christian
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
Taha Avalos
The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
bkoganbing
In another few years coal miner turned boxer turned actor Charles Bronson would have been perfect to star in this film which was almost autobiographical in his case. Like Jeff Chandler in this film, Bronson was brought up in the Pennsylvania coal mining country and took up boxing before acting as a way out of some dire poverty. Chandler plays coal miner Coke Mason who only wants to earn enough money to start a business and get married to Evelyn Keyes. But his brother Stephen McNally sees a future in Chandler's fists and wants to manage him. Chandler has one thing that can't be taught. He has a murderous punch and a killer instinct in the ring. Lots of fighters have that, two of the most prominent were Jack Dempsey and Rocky Graziano. In fact in that aspect this version of Iron Man is close to the Graziano film Somebody Up There Likes Me.The main weakness in the film is there is no real explanation for why Chandler is such an animal in the ring. Especially since one of the supporting characters is Rock Hudson who is from those same mines and also becomes a boxer, but he uses skill and speed and is a fan favorite. Chandler is as unpopular as one of Vince McMahon's patented wresting villains.It's a good boxing film, but this version of Iron Man will never rank with a film like Champion where another prize fighter has a killer instinct.
ford-greg
This is an entertaining movie, but one that goes for the cheap, easy ending, where Jeff Chandler's character of Coke decides to fight clean and loses to Rock Hudson's Speed. I think it would have been a better to have Coke be so angry about his former friends abandoning him that he approaches the O'Keefe fight with such fury, displaying it in the ring as well, that he ends up either killing or seriously injuring O'Keefe. Only then does he realize what his style of fighting can do. Perhaps, in the end he redeems himself by fighting with more restraint in the next battle, and losing, or maybe, as someone pointed out here earlier, his win at all costs drive makes him an outcast. Let me say, that despite the rather cheesy ending, The Iron Man is a good movie, well acted and worth watching.
mikefive
This film is a remake of Iron Man of 1931 with Lew Ayres and Jean Harlow, also made in 1937 as Some Blondes are Dangerous, but here Evelyn Keyes, the blonde is not the central character. Jeff Chandler, Rock Hudson and James Arness are workers in a mine and also boxers. Chandler wins his fights when he hates and gets furious, he becomes an animal and also the public does not like him. Rock Hudson is the nice guy and Evelyn Keyes is Chandler's girlfriend and Stephen McNally his brother and also agent. The fight scenes do not look very real, specially when Chandler gets punched on the face, it does not seem to affect him, it is almost like he does not defend himself, he only cares about hitting. I think that in a real fight he would be knocked out in a couple of minutes fighting this way. The film is interesting, specially because of the presence of Hudson and Arness at the beginning of their careers.
bmacv
Can it be merely coincidence, even in the relative innocence of 1951, that the boxers in Iron Man go by the names of Coke and Speed? (The fact that they're played by Jeff Chandler and Rock Hudson, whom viewers today will identify as, respectively, a cross-dresser and a gay man, adds another latter-day dimension to their sweat-lubricated clinches.) In any case, their stimulating monikers do no injustice to the story a jacked-up, strung-out fight movie that's a worthy entry in that oddly distinguished, brutal genre.It starts in Coaltown, Pennsylvania, a mining community where the only excitement is wondering when the shafts will cave in. When Chandler takes on a bully and thoroughly thrashes him, his brother (Steve McNally) and girl (Evelyn Keyes) see a glamorous future and fast money for him and for them. The only catch is that Chandler isn't a born boxer: He's clumsy and gets pummeled. But when he's hurt (and then jeered at), he falls into blind, murderous rages, going after his opponents by fair means or foul. He wins purses and titles but not the hearts of the fans they don't like dirty fighters, and come only in hopes of seeing him get his comeuppance. But they keep coming, and soon Chandler's poised for the heavyweight title.The story, ably directed by Joseph Pevney, follows a familiar course: The fallings-out with his brother and his wife, the big-time sportswriter who becomes his manager (Jim Backus), the fixed fight, the fallacious sense of invincibility. And the ending is a little too pat and feel-good. But it's one of Chandler's best roles (he's as good as Kirk Douglas in The Champion, if not so convincing as Robert Ryan in The Set-Up, both of two years earlier). Evelyn Keyes has but two things to do: First egg him on, then beg him to stop, but she's, as always, distinctive. (She gets slugged by him, too.) Hudson's another case entirely. In the part of the loyal sparring-partner who turns into the challenger, he's confined to playing L'il Abner a good-natured but dim-witted lout. But in the final grudge-match, he reverts to the sheer, feral physicality of which he was capable but rarely called upon to display and, in its final scene, he all but steals the movie away from Chandler. He's the breakout star.