Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Starring Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle and others

Star rating: ***

When trailers for this film came out, like the previous two films, Iron Man 3 had the film world buzzing again. It was set to be the biggest blockbuster of the Iron Man series yet with Robert Downey Jr heading up the Iron Man franchise again. It is always hard, i think, for a film to live up to its previous two films and expectations are always far greater than for its predecessors too. Iron Man has now created a cult following within the audience with the comic book lovers who endeavour to pursue their hero from page to the big screen and the general film goer who is looking for an entertaining watch, two audiences which are hard to cater for and satisfy. 

This film starts where the Avengers movie left off, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) is left feeling bereft after dealing with a 'wormholes to another planet' and 'a big guy falling out of the sky with a big hammer' (his words not mine) and is now finding incredibly hard to move on from New York. His obsessive nature means that he is increasingly hidden away in his workshop playing around with Iron Man prototypes and co-habiting in a 'stable' relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). Meanwhile, trouble is brewing in the form of the Mandarin (Ben Kingley) a terrorist and fanatic who is intent on teaching America a lesson and an immoral scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a science entrepeneur who is rejected by Stark originally in his youth.

Robert Downey Jr is at his best, playing what by now, is a well rehearsed role of the sarcastic and obnoxious Tony Stark. He has some great scenes in the film with a little boy who is helping him and is comically dismissive of the boy's father leaving the child. Downey Jr 's portrayal of the broken hero humanises the character and that show of humanity is difficult to do in a character that is so fiercely arrogant and strong in other respects. Paltrow is more relaxed in this film than she ever has been and in the few scenes she has been given, she comes across as endearing. She has a great fight scene in the film and she plays off Downey Jr as great as ever. 

The film has plenty of spectacle with some fantastic fight scenes which clearly have taken a lot of work to accomplish with some great use of CGI to make it as realistic as possible. Much so like the Dark Knight Trilogy's character Bane, the Mandarin is characterised to be as ruthless and dark, killing at a drop of hat. The problem is the script. It is not great in the sense that the story takes a turn for the unbelievable towards the end and it is sad because the first half does have the audience hooked. Downey has been given so many punchlines that they become less and less dramatic as the film goes on and it would have been interesting to see his character develop with his new found vulnerabilities. There are some great British gags about football, Downtown Abbey and Croydon which drew laughs from the audience too, but overall the script was weak. A good effort but for all the hype it received  it didn't quite deliver when it came to the result.