MOVIE · 1999

The Iron Giant

AdventureAnimationComedyDramaFamilySci-Fi86 min

In Rockwell, Maine, in October 1957, nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes discovers a giant metal visitor from the sky and tries to keep it hidden as the town slips into Cold War panic. Eli Marienthal is Hogarth, a lonely, curious kid whose friendship with the robot grows with help from Harry Connick Jr.'s Dean, a beatnik scrap artist who becomes his ally. As rumors spread and a federal agent starts circling, Brad Bird’s animated film grounds its science-fiction premise in 1950s small-town life, mixing wide-eyed wonder with the suspicion and fear surrounding a machine no one understands.