Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang

Rating: 5/10 (13 May 2013)

Shane Black was a promising choice to take over the reins of the Iron Man franchise. Marvel is known for their cut-throat operating tactics, and, after rumours of internal strife with Jon Favreau on Iron Man 2 (word has it he felt they were rushing him and his production -- which, in hindsight, given the lackluster response to the film, is probably a fair assessment), they unceremoniously ditched him for the guy who made Robert Downey Jr's lead role comeback vehicle, "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," in 2005.
Black was the Tarantino of '80s action screenplays, an overnight sensation who was hired to act in "Predator" purely so that Joel Silver could get free on-set script rewrites. He had a string of big hits into the early '90s until a couple bombs stung him and he retreated for ages. It's sort of weird that he chose a $200 million franchise picture to be his route of re-emergence - but so it goes. The trademarks of Black's scripts are here: the movie is set at Christmastime, has a lot of witty banter, and there's probably a lot more humour than in the last couple Iron Mans.
Here's where my first fault lies: the tone of this movie is decidedly different from the first two. I think that was deliberate and a wise choice, given that the first two Iron Man movies seemed to be set more firmly in reality, and "Avengers" (and the Thors and Cap Ams) sort of opened Tony Stark's world to something more fantastic and unbelievable. If you rewatch Iron Man, if an alien suddenly showed up at the end it would be a jarring tonal shift. But after Avengers, anything is possible, so Black takes the action a little further, takes the Extremis plot to extremes (pardon the pun), and makes the movie a little more goofy than I expected.
Here's what is odd, though: if they're trying to reestablish Iron Man as more fantastical than he was in the first two installments, why the controversial Mandarin subplot? I don't have a dog in the race so to speak since I don't read the comics, but if they're going to try to make the Mandarin a 'realistic' interpretation, why bother to (some might say) ruin the iconic character instead of presenting him with his magical powers? Would having powerful rings be *that* much weirder than gods from Asgard showing up or a giant green hulk? I also thought Black's dialogue, though clever, was under-served by some of the woeful supporting actors. The main henchman working for Guy Pearce's character was entirely non-intimidating -- they should have gotten someone whose supposed menace wasn't so laughable. The female Extremis warriors, all supermodel status with their flawless makeup, just made me roll my eyes. Black gives all these characters cheesy one-liners that wouldn't be so cheesy if they weren't such bad actors. When you're sparring with Robert Downey Jr you need someone who can match the verbal delivery - that's why Val Kilmer's smarminess was a perfect complement to Downey in Kiss Kiss - but Black consistently gives Downey poor pairings. It's sad when the little kid ends up being the best one of the lot.
Don Cheadle is fairly wasted again and Gwyneth Paltrow isn't given much to do. Such is normal for the franchise so far but you can't help but feel that whole (fairly odd) hour build-up with Tony out of the suit for much of the time they could have better developed these characters. The biggest disappointment, though, is Guy Pearce. If you thought they wasted Mickey Rourke in the last film, wait til you get a hold of Pearce. First he's given the Jim Carrey role in Batman Forever to redo in the beginning, then he's just a sort of charmless yet hammy villain later on. His motivations are clichÃ©d and underdeveloped. Pearce is a brilliant actor and filmmakers continue to waste his talents.
The movie has some cool action sequences and the $200 mil is up on the screen. The CGI is some of the best in any film made to date. But it's also becoming all so mind-numbing. The big long action sequence at the end goes on and on, and because 99% of it is so clearly CGI, much of it becomes uninspiring. You lose interest in Tony's humanity when so many of his feats betray physical limits: I think there's a hundred shots in this movie where he's leaping off a high building of some kind and jumps into an Iron Man suit mid-air and flies around and does something just in the nick of time to save someone.
I don't know - maybe I'm just burnt out by the onslaught of Marvel products and how relentless they've been with jamming these movies down our collective throat - but I really think I'm getting bored by this franchise already. Judging by some of his recent comments, so is Downey. Part of me hopes he does take a hiatus from Iron Man so he can start acting in proper films again - a sequel to Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang would actually be quite nice.