Lethal Weapons

Rating: 6/10 (30 April 2014)

Shane Black enters the The Iron Man franchise as co-writer and director and re-teams with Robert Downey Jr after Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Black brings a little hard steel to the sometimes silly Iron Man films as well as bringing a more focused mix of action and humour.
Once again as it did in the first film we have a plot involving the military-industrial complex and terrorism which fuels it. We have a sinister, almost Osama Bin Laden type bad guy called The Mandarin played by Ben Kingsley whose later reveal as a druggie, out of work actor is rather inspired allowing Kingsley to put on a different more playful performance.
Anyone who has seen previous Marvel films and the other Iron Man films could probably work out from the initial scenes who the ultimate baddie will be and along the way you have mayhem, destruction and Stark doing his own 'McGuyver' thing in the middle.
This time Stark narrates the ongoing story and you have to wait for the post credits sequence as to who he is narrating the story to and once again Downey is the anchor who drives the film and has made the Iron Man films a success despite its flaws, although this is better than the last one which is a credit to Black.