Ironman 3: “I have to save the President and my girlfriend! And the prom is tomorrow!”

                I will admit that I approached this movie with low expectations. The movie’s television advert had a distinctly “America Fuck, Yeah!” tone to it: War Machine’s armour was literally painted as an American flag and the villain of the piece, the Mandarin, was depicted as an Islamic terrorist. However the movie despite having a number of flaws actually exceeded my expectations and it proved to be a very enjoyable experience.

                The latest installment in the Iron Man franchise sees America in a state of shock as it weathers bomb attacks from an enigmatic villain known as the Mandarin.  What makes these attacks so disturbing is that they produce no clues with regards to the Mandarin’s location or who his conspirators are: no evidence of bomb material survives the explosions and security cameras fail to reveal any bombers. When Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr) old bodyguard is caught on one of the explosions, Stark swears revenge and challenges the Mandarin on live TV to come after him. What follows is an entertaining and exciting movie which sees Iron Man fight powerful enemies in his quest to find the Mandarin and this quest eventually leads to the door of a scientist who Stark had slighted in 1999 (Guy Pearce). As I stated above, I was apprehensive that Iron Man would strike a jingoistic tone and for the first half of the movie that seemed to be the case however an unexpected twist in the tale helps to upturn these assumptions. This twist is the main reason why I enjoyed the movie and I think it makes up for the quiet weak plotting which is otherwise present throughout the movie. A friend after the film smartly summarized the formulaic nature of the plot with the sentence: “I have to save the President and my girlfriend! And the prom is tomorrow!” The plot is formulaic but I wouldn’t hold that as a major criticism and I think it delivers the excitement one would expect from a blockbuster.  Furthermore the special effects are very well done and the humour is strong throughout the film.

At times the plot felt badly paced: some set pieces are needlessly put into the story. For example in the movie Stark suffers from periodic panic attacks after his experience in the alien dimension in the Avengers. While this humanizes Stark it is not clear how it contributes to plot. Likewise the last ten minutes clumsily introduces a new plot point which seems forced and unnecessary, and worse still,  I could see this piece playing a significant (and boring) part in the next Avenger’s movie.

Roger Downey Jr’s performance as Tony Stark/Ironman was sharp and he was well severed by the script’s smart gags. Likewise Ben Kingsley’s acting was similarly on the button and he showed his range by effortless switching from sinister villain to ridiculous clown.  While Tony Stark was a well written character the other members of the cast were one dimensional and unsympathetic. The fact that the villains’ motivations were not clearly outlined handicaps the plot. Likewise many characters struck me as unnecessary and their absence might have made the plot tighter.

In summary Ironman 3 is an exciting action-adventure romp which while suffering from some major plot weakness is overall an enjoyable movie.