Iron Man 3: 5.4

Rating: 5/10 (25 April 2018)

Iron Man 3 is the worst of the Iron Man trilogy. The narrative has no flow to it making it move along slowly and jaggedly. It makes many attempts to get going but it never picks up speed. Stuttery pacing and underwhelming action bogs the movie down. Robert Downey Jr. does what he can but it isn't enough to make the movie worth seeing. The character arc he follows doesn't seem to work and is less satisfying than his arc in his first two movies and even in The Avengers. Stark is put up in conflict with a villain who fails to make an impact. Driven by bad visual effects, the villain is just another boring antagonist to move the story along. There's only two action sequences that are enjoyable. The rest of the action is just disjointed, and short spurted. At the end of the second act and the beginning of the third act there is a buddy cop aspect between Stark and Rhodey that works great. When that aspect is present the movie actually starts to find its groove, but that groove disintegrates before you know it. Overall, Iron Man 3 lack's that certain eccentric feel that the first two movies did, and the result is an underwhelming and clunky film that should have dedicated more of it's time to being a buddy cop adventure. So I give it a 5.4