Review - Iron Man 3 (2013)

Starring Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Guy Pearce.
Directed by Shane Black.

The summer blockbusters are here and it gets going with the third installment of the Iron Man franchise - Iron Man 3. After a very disappointing Iron Man 2, the world looks to a thrilling conclusion of the Marvel trilogy. Picking up after the events of The Avengers, we see a shaken up Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), suffering from anxiety attacks and stress. Like your typical superhero movie, some lunatic decides he wants world domination and in this case, it happens to be the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley).

The Mandarin is a terrorist leader who has declared warfare upon America. He remains hidden for much of the film, just like his agenda. At the beginning of the film, we meet disabled scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) who was seemingly heartbroken after his offer got rejected by Stark. The movie moves forward forgetting about his character for a little while and focuses on the turmoil happening. I could pretty much tell from a mile away that Guy Pearce's character would somehow become one of the film's antagonist. The signs were pretty much there from the get-go when we saw him looking distraught on the roof like an idiot. As a result, the twist which unravelled regarding the Mandarin didn't surprise me and didn't do much for this already messy storyline - though I liked Ben Kingsley's goofiness in that particular scene. Much of the cast from the previous film reprised their roles; Robert Downey was his usual charismatic self at first, providing much of the humor but I do believe he went a little overboard as the film progressed. He came off as corny, too much babbling and much like most of Iron Man 3 - I just couldn't take him or anyone serious.

The movie does boast some decent action sequences and visual effects. The first major set-piece involving Stark's home looks like a cataclysmic event that happened in the movie '2012'. Other set-pieces followed and I know most action fans will be pleased. However where Iron Man 3 really fell down was the lack of buildup. I'm there waiting for something great to happen and it just never got there. Yeah I thought the action sequences were cool but they really didn't blow me away. I think this movie was more focused on providing laughs rather than being an actual superhero movie. It tried too hard to be funny; I was not amused. The script was poor; the cheesy one-liners were bleh. The story behind the Extremis experiment was so vague and other bits of the storyline made little to no sense. Seriously, what is Killian's true purpose in this movie? I doubt even he knew. The villains were disappointing. Director Shane Black should have still ran with the Mandarin.

On the flip side, I think this installment was better than the previous one. Unfortunately Iron Man 3 failed to impress me like I had hoped for. Decent action but overall a forgettable conclusion to this Marvel franchise.

Rating: 5.5/10

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