Casey's Movie Mania: IRON MAN 3 (2013)

Rating: 5/10 (27 April 2013)

Less of a superhero movie than a Tony Stark show in an action comedy mode, IRON MAN 3 is energetic but suffers from unnecessarily bloated screenplay while the comedy element borderlines into near parody.
After the record-shattering (box office, that is) of THE AVENGERS last summer, I'm sure a lot of fans are eager to see how Marvel is going to move on with their Phase Two project -- starting with the highly-anticipated IRON MAN 3. The good news is, IRON MAN 3 is a minor improvement over the tepid IRON MAN 2 (2010). Unfortunately, just about everything in IRON MAN 3 is an overkill -- the plot is heavy-handed and the humor is too broad while the superhero element is surprisingly a bit too grounded for its own good (you know it when you see it).
Director Shane Black (who replaced Jon Favreau from the first two IRON MAN movies) does a credible job handling his first big-budget Hollywood movie. He knows how to stage a few exciting action sequences as well as delivering his trademark of witty one-liners. You can say IRON MAN 3 is the funniest of all three movies and this is especially made possible by the ever-charismatic Robert Downey Jr. As the ego-centric and now-anxious Tony Stark, Downey Jr. is often funny yet engaging enough to root for his character. I must say this is the best incarnation of Tony Stark I've ever seen so far. One surprising element that I never thought possible is how Black delivers a great buddy chemistry between Tony Stark and Col. James Rhodes (Don Cheadle). They immediately reminded me of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the LETHAL WEAPON series (where Black used to write the first two installments). That's not all, Downey Jr. also has a brief but memorable buddy moment with the talented Ty Simpkins who plays Harley during the Tennessee scene.
It seems to me that Shane Black is more interested to feature more Tony Stark in person than the Iron Man itself. On the surface, it's a bold reinterpretation from the usual IRON MAN movie but I'm sure a lot of fans and moviegoers alike are expecting an IRON MAN movie, not a Tony Stark movie. Then there's the radical change of the bloated plot written by Drew Pearce and Shane Black himself. Apart from trying too hard to cram a lot of subgenre into a 130-minute length, I was particularly shocked to find the surprise twist halfway through. Let's just say it's a total cop-out the way how they treated a certain character in this movie. As for the two featured villains, Ben Kingsley's The Mandarin and Guy Pearce's Aldrich Killian are sadly unmemorable. Even the post-credits scene this time around, let's just say, doesn't get you excited all over the place.
Overall, IRON MAN 3 is a middling effort and it's quite sad to see Shane Black fails to capitalize the full potential of a superhero genre.
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