Rating in Stars: ***½ (out of ****)
Cast: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, Ben Kingsley
Director: Shane Black
MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence throughout, and brief suggestive content)
Running Time: 2:10
Release Date: 05/03/13
If the first film had the opportunity to examine the reasons that its titular superhero had to don the gold titanium alloy suit shot with hot-rod red that has an arsenal of weapons up its sleeves and in its shoulder pads only to thrust him into a generic conflict and its first sequel did nothing to expand upon that potential (It certainly didn’t and, in fact, regressed from it), then Iron Man Three is the first time in this series–or, indeed, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, considering his appearance in The Avengers was in direct proportion to how he interacts with another superhero–that the man within the suit has been properly examined. What writer/director Shane Black finds is a damaged prodigy from privilege and a source of unflappable sarcasm. It seems that trauma, which is the real conflict in store for the man, activates the defense mechanism of outwardly taking nothing seriously.
That is a quality that Black’s carefully honed screenplay shares, too, as is clear in a sequence wherein Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) visits an anomalous location in Tennessee where an explosion may or may not have occurred that is similar to a series of them that have left many people dead and no trace of a source. He meets Harley (Ty Simpkins), a young, plucky kid whose personality mirrors Tony’s own and who aids in Tony’s investigation of the scene of a crime that left five people dead. The scene is oddly but affectionately balanced between the investigation and their repertoire. Downey’s performance is similarly balanced between the moroseness of Tony’s internal conflict and his sarcastic deflection of it; it’s the actor’s best work to date in the role.
That internal conflict has reared its head in the form of sleeplessness and posttraumatic anxiety following the events that led to New York City being overrun by aliens. Even the mention of the city or the beings from someone as innocuous as a child who wants an autograph on his drawing of the battle sets the stress level to 11 for Tony, whose Iron Man alter ego has gone through an upheaval as of late. The lack of sleep has nonetheless spawned a terrific creative spike in the form of remote-controlled suits and a nifty device that summons them and has been placed subcutaneously in his wrist. When one of those attacks is upon Air Force One, he uses one of them to great effect–until, of course, it meets the front end of a semi truck (The interrupted hero shot is a constant, go-to gag that never fails to illicit a healthy chuckle).
External conflict is two-fold this time around. First, there is the re-introduction of Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), whom Tony met in 1999 (a meeting that we see in a prologue amusingly scored to a late-decade one-hit wonder) while working on a project with confidant and sort-of-girlfriend Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall). He wants to collaborate on his newest bit of technology, which is the rejuvenation of genetic defects through cellular manipulation, with Stark Industries, but Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), its C.E.O., thinks it highly weaponizable. The other, seemingly more generic conflict comes from a terrorist calling himself the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley); he is the one responsible for bombings positioned as social experiments for the President of the United States (William Sadler), who has now publicly championed James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), aka Iron Patriot, as an official superhero on the government’s behalf.
Things, though, are not as they seem, and the result is the film within the Marvel Cinematic Universe that feels as if it’s taking the biggest number of chances. Part of that is in the revelation of the Mandarin’s identity (refreshingly played as a joke that might be a barb aimed at the MCU itself for giving us such generic villains); the other part is in the action sequences, which are either creatively conceived (the aforementioned Air Force One rescue or the destruction of Tony’s residence, in which a piano is used as a weapon) or thrillingly staged (the climax, which might predictably be set among crates on a rig in the ocean but is a highlight all the same due to the welcome levity of humor and more of those interrupted hero shots). Iron Man Three is unique and risky, yes, but it’s also a lot of cheeky fun.
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