Iron Man 3 (2013)

I should hope that by now any regular readers of this blog know how I feel about The Avengers and its bland brethren. Since that movie was such a unanimous hit, I have often been accused in the past year of hating action movies because of my negative review of it, despite my positive reviews of Haywire, Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol, The Amazing Spider-Man, etc. In other words, I don’t hate any specific genre of movies, just bad representations of them. Iron Man 3 further proves my point. As you can probably guess, it is the third feature film in the individual Iron Man saga, though he made an appearance in The Avengers as well. This one finds him in a similar situation as the others, battling a stock supervillain who has a crazy weapon at his disposal, kidnaps the president and wants to do something or other to the stock market; cue evil laugh. Yes, on paper it sounds terribly typical, but this is one example of delivery saving the joke.

The Iron Man movies have all sat well with audiences and are probably only second to the Dark Knight trilogy in terms of modern superhero popularity. The biggest reason for their success is Robert Downey, Jr. as the title character. He is an actor who seldom strays from a personality formula that has given the same snarky personality traits to everyone from Iron Man to Sherlock Holmes to Charlie Chaplin. I used to complain that people have confused his sarcasm for charisma, but his style must be growing on me, or maybe I never gave it a fair chance. Downey gives Tony Stark a down-to-Earth charm that somehow makes the character seem more real than even Christopher Nolan’s hyper-realism ever could handle. Also on hand is Gwyneth Paltrow in a formerly thankless role as “the girlfriend,” who now has been made much stronger and more likable. Together, they pass off their occasionally silly dialogue as if it were the most natural thing in the world and they give us reasons galore to care about them, even bordering on genuine emotion on more than one occasion. That’s true star power.

Shane Black co-writes (with Drew Pearce) and directs here in what is only his second film as director after the clever and entertaining Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. As a newcomer to the series and the superhero genre in general, Black creates a picture that aesthetically retains all the qualities that made Jon Favreau’s first films so popular, but adds to the story a notable flair and thematic competence that allows everyone who isn’t a comic book fan to be in on the fun. His passion to actually make the film worthwhile is obvious and his screenplay is full of surprises, from the ease with which the story alternates between the intense, tragic and comical to the way the much-advertised Ben Kingsley villain is treated. Let’s just say that he’s still a better character than Bane.

There are two major missteps in the proceedings. First, the Guy Pearce character is far too cut and dry, so much an obvious afterthought that the actor who is perfectly capable of great villainy (see Lawless) is left on the sidelines as an over-the-top distraction. Secondly, Black makes the mistake of the mediocre action movies that are nothing but a long string of climaxes, making everything less exciting by default. The good news is that this doesn’t happen until the end when what should be just one climax turns into several. Perhaps Black thought these mindless twenty minutes were necessary, but based on the quality of what precedes them, he’s better than that. 

Still, nothing in the ending diminishes the great achievement of entertainment the picture is as a whole. Complete with multiple moments that produce genuine alarm and only taking place in the Marvel universe in a tongue-in-cheek way (the screenplay briefly pokes fun at the idiocy that was Thor), Iron Man 3 is a significant improvement over the other movies cut from the same cloth. I was also pleased with the finality of the conclusion, which will hopefully discourage any ideas about trudging up an Iron Man 4. It is the perfect family movie to start out the probably inferior summer offerings that are on the way.

8/10