A better film buried under too much iron

Rating: 6/10 (1 July 2013)

It's entertaining enough but far from a masterwork. The Tennessee scenes where Tony's on his own worked; the Mandarin was a nice McGuffin, but sadly, the whole finale didn't work. Apart from the fact that the story loses some focus because of all the pyrotechnics and action - the noise even drowned out Pepper's death which should have been a very emotional scene - it's very unsatisfying. The appeal of IM3 should have been that Tony manages to take out his enemies on his own, without his laboratory and suits and money, and they started that off pretty OK by destroying his home base, and even the scenes in Malibu ran along that line and were pretty OK. But at the story's climax, we learn that he still has an army of suits at his disposal, hidden away until the last 10 minutes of the story?! What were they thinking?! What was HE thinking?! Note to screenwriters: It's more satisfying to outwit the villains than to outgun them, the more so for superheroes, because outgunning is too easy for them.
Apart from those script troubles, I liked it well enough; production values are good (as has to be expected), performances are good, the action was filmed in a very straightforward manner, and especially the set for the finale is very good. I wouldn't mind watching it again if someone offered me a ticket but there's a better film hidden behind all the big bangs which sadly didn't get realised.