Film Review - Iron Man 3 (2013)

Iron Man 3 sees Robert Downey Jr. return as Tony Stark and this time Shane Black his director from Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang takes up directing duties, the story here concerns Stark unable to sleep following the events of the Avengers and in the meantime the world being terrorized by an unseen threat called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) as well as a rival business man (Guy Pearce) who Stark will eventually have to confront.

It is fair to say I went into Iron Man 3 with very uncertain expectations as while I really enjoyed the first Iron Man film I had an intense dislike of the second, it was a complete mess and made me think of Highlander II in terms of being a pathetic follow up to a first film I really loved so as a result there was uncertainty over this third film, did it return the series to Iron form or continue the small signs of rust seen in the last film.

Well the truth of the matter lies somewhere in the middle for I have very mixed feelings in regards to this film, it certainly isn't bad let's be honest but it is also very problematic but before I delve into those I'll start with the positives.

The first positive is the use of the events of the Avengers as a key story point in the film as it shows that Marvel are creating a big cinematic universe for their characters that makes events from the other films have a sense of weight to them whereas in other franchises its mainly ignored, happily that isn't here.

The second positive I have is the use of Tony Stark outside of the suit for much of the film, the early scenes of the first film were a nice use of his intellect and that is again on show here and Downey seems to be enjoying himself most in those scenes.

And finally the last positive is the final battle sequence involving Iron Man and it is a fantastic sequence with a real flow to it as well as a sense of scale and excitement, heck at times I was saying to myself "Concentrate all Fire on that Super Star Destroyer" as it did feel like the Space Battle in Return of the Jedi as it was going on, it's really terrific and well worth the wait.

But sadly for those two key strengths it also has some key weaknesses that are very hard to ignore, at least for me.

The first is sadly, the film's villains, yes I know what you're saying "You always have this problem" and that is true for I fundamentally believe that an action film like this one needs a strong villain in order to have a strong film, something Black is very familiar with given that his two Lethal Weapon films had excellent villains in Mr. Joshua and General McAllister in the first film and Arjen Rudd in the second, that said though this isn't his fault per se as a fault of Marvel who come up short in the villain department when compared with their rivals at DC who have a good resource of villains to fall back on for their superhero characters.

That said though Pearce isn't too bad but his character isn't that much different to Sam Rockwell's in the last film and only a little more interesting as well, a pity as Pearce is a good actor but it left me wanting more.

The second problem I had with the film is that much of the film plays out like Tony Stark as Martin Riggs, no surprise given that Black also created that character in the Lethal Weapon series, it was okay but it was also something that got on my nerves after a while, especially when you see him and Rhodie (Don Cheadle playing the role better than he did in 2) sneaking around a cargo ship port in a scene that is right out of Lethal Weapon 2 and those two definitely having the Riggs/Murtaugh style to them, heck you could easily put those characters into that part of the film and you wouldn't miss a thing.

The last problem I have is that film does run on a little too long for its own good and the middle act could've easily seen a good 10 minutes chopped from its run time to spice up that section of the film which it could've done with.

And so in closing, Iron Man 3 is a marginal improvement on the first one but it still doesn't come close to beating the first film as my favourite of the trilogy which had a nice clean feel to its storytelling that its successors have lacked, it is fair to say that there are some signs of rust on this series starting to grow and while the film is not a disappointment for me, a film divided cannot stand for me, 2 out of 5.