'Iron Man 3' Review (dir. Shane Black)

Score: ★★★★/★★★★★

 

Going in to 'Iron Man 3' I was expecting to sit down and watch an enjoyable comic book film, but I must say, the first act of this film almost shattered all hopes of that. The first act had poorly-written dialogue, two-dimensional characters, and almost every Hollywood cliché in the book. However, as soon as the second act started, the movie transformed into a fantastic comic book adaptation with a very involving story. From then on out it got better and better, until a disappointing and anti-climactic final fight, but even with some flawed moments, this is still one of Marvel's best films to date.

           'Iron Man 3' is directed by Shane Black, a large improvement over Jon Favreau (the director of the first two films, and also the actor that has played Happy Hogan in all three Iron Man movies), and (of course) features Robert Downey Jr. reprising the role of Tony Stark (Iron Man). The film picks up soon after 'The Avengers', and the events of that film are haunting Tony Stark, who is constantly having nightmares and panic attacks. Soon, he is threatened by a new villain, The Mandarin, who is planting bombs all over the United States. After one of Stark's friends is injured in a Mandarin attack, he returns as Iron Man to fight off the new villain.  

The plot and structure of the film are not paticullarly great, nor are they even that good. Some of the characters' motives can seem far-fetched, and some of the characters seem to have no real reason for behaving certain ways. There are several plot holes in the movie, but it would be futile going over them since they really don't affect whether or not I liked the film. The script is alright, nothing particularly special about it, when the screenplay takes a lighter tone it works better, but when it takes itself seriously it can go way over-the-top. I thought most of the humor in this movie worked quite well. Out of all the Iron Man films thus far, it was certainly the funniest.

        As for direction, like I previously said, this a huge improvement over the direction of the first two films, but again, it's nothing that special. Shane Black handles the action sequences very well, but the more emotional and intimate scenes scream mediocrity. In the previous films, I thought Favreau did a better job with the one-on-one character interactions, and did a less impressive job with the action sequences. The visual effects here are very impressive, the best I've seen in any movie this year besides 'Oblivion', especially one scene towards the end of the first act.

 

The performances are solid in this movie, the two best being Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark, and Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin. I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s character in this one much more than I did in both 'The Avengers' or 'Iron Man 2' (I found him very tedious in bothe those films, due to an endless supply of one-liners), you get to care more about his character in this movie. I loved Ben Kingsley in the movie, however, I did not enjoy the villian, but I can't say why without spoilers. All three Iron Man movies have had very weak villians, especially 'Iron Man 2'. The other thing I would like to mention about this film was the editing, I thought it had some very bizarre transition shots that could get annoying. However, the cinematography, score, sound, performances, and direction were all good.

       This is not a perfect film, it has some very good moments, and it has some very weak moments, but in the end I'd say its positive qualities overshadow the negative ones. This movie is a lot of fun, I can say it is a huge improvement over 'The Avengers' and 'Iron Man 2', I would actually go as far as to say that this is my favorite Iron Man in the series by quite a bit. I'm glad this movie turned out the way it did, and I can't wait to see Iron Man return to the screen again. On a side note, please do not sit through the entirety of the credits to see the clip they play after it. You will be thoroughly disappointed.