Iron Man's Blacksmith tightens the lug nuts

Miss the 1990s? Well, they’re back – and under the care and feeding of Lethal Weapon scribe Shane Black, Marvel’s Iron Man 3 busts the rivets in a giddy and frenetic slug-fest that’s awfully crowd-pleasing – and at times, crowd-pleasingly awful.

Make no mistake, the third act of director Shane Black’s post-Avengers take on Tony Stark delivers like Union Pacific. But it’s not always pretty getting there. There are times when Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark threatens to become Tony Snark, waffling back and forth between anxiety and gross narcissism. Which may be the point, as the universe seems to be saying that the head of Stark Industries could stand to be knocked down a peg or two.

Antagonism comes in the form of an international terrorist called The Mandarin, effectively reimagined by Ben Kingsley. Let’s just say that Shane Black’s Mandarin is a bit less “Lo Pan” than his previous incarnation in the comics – and it works. Kingsley is one of the most enjoyable parts of the movie. Equally fun is Guy Pearce as a nerdy scientist from Stark’s path who gives himself one hell of a makeover – and has more than a passing interest in longtime Stark gal-pal Pepper Paltrow. Gwyneth’s chemistry with Downey seems a little off this time around, further skewed by her taking on a lot more involvement in the action. Aldrich Killian (Pearce) has developed something called Extremis (from the Warren Ellis comic), tapping into DNA to reprogram it to regenerate limbs and enhance strength.

Stark runs afoul of The Mandarin and some Extremis-amped followers, his palatial mansion crashing down on top of him. He’ll have to hide out in rural Tennessee to lick his wounds and with the aid of a scrappy young kid (without a Tennessee accent), rebuild his suit and make a plan to take down the bad guys.

There’s a lot to like in Iron Man 3, but it takes a while to hit its stride. Early scenes with a cartoonishly inept Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) are wincingly painful to watch. Favreau seems to be playing to a really young audience and acts as if he just wondered in from the set of Home Alone. Tony’s new fly-and-attach armor gets old and cumbersome pretty quickly.

It’s in the big payoff where Iron Man 3 starts to please. Stark teams up with Don Cheadle (now Iron Patriot) to get some payback and the two channel Lethal Weapon’s Riggs and Murtaugh in a major way. The violence is more damaging and we find out Tony has a chest of heavy metal toys that managed to avoid destruction. It’s a hoot to see perennial bad guy William Sadler as the President and Robocop weasel Miguel Ferrer as the VP – is John Carpenter their Secretary of State? The big action set pieces are a lot of fun, but so cartoonishly kinetic as to defy believability a bit too often. Unfortunately, a stuntman wearing a parachute under his clothes still looks like he’s wearing a parachute under his clothes.
If you forget to stay for the obligatory bonus scene that follows the end credits, which all Marvel Studios films contain…don’t kick yourself. Disappointingly it contributes nothing to the emerging Phase II storyline and is even less enjoyable than Shawarma. This latest Iron Man is nowhere near as deft or smart as The Avengers – still, it has a lot of fun shooting the works, and summer action audiences should have little to complain about.