‘Iron Man 3’ proves just ‘Marvelous’
The following is a condensed version of a review published Thursday in the Sun-Times.
When it comes to choosing the most interesting superhero, you can say Superman vs. Spider-Man vs. Batman vs. Iron Man is a fair fight. But when it’s Clark Kent vs. Peter Parker vs. Bruce Wayne vs. Tony Stark, I don’t see how anyone can go with the newspaper reporter or the photographer or even the brooding billionaire playboy vs. the brilliant, fast-talking, hard-living, deeply conflicted, wildly narcissistic and vulnerable Mr. Stark.
Come on. He’s got a glowing electromagnetic device in his chest to keep his heart from literally breaking. Game, set, match.
We get more Tony Stark than Iron Man in the cleverly titled “Iron Man 3,” and that means we get Robert Downey Jr. delivering a performance that should earn awards consideration, but we know that’ll never happen because the people who vote for awards tend to favor roles that require the actor to dig deep into his tool kit to portray a complex, flawed character — Oh, wait. Downey is great. Not great with the caveat he’s acting in a giant summer action movie destined to gross a billion dollars, but just plain great. Every second he’s onscreen, whether he’s wearing one of his magical metal suits or walking armed with only his wit into a tavern, he commands the moment.
Filled with breathtakingly brilliant special effects, bolstered by excellent supporting performances from a half-dozen other top-tier actors, crackling with sharp humor and working as a story that stands alone while often acknowledging the larger Marvel(ous) universe, “Iron Man 3” is one of the best entries in this modern golden age of superhero movies.
We start with a flashback to New Year’s Eve in Switzerland in 1999, with Stark in full-blown, egotistical, womanizing billionaire mode, seducing the gorgeous bota- nist Maya (Rebecca Hall) while ditching weirdo scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) as casually as he’d brush lint off his silk suit. (You’d think Tony would know not to blow off the creepy, pushy scientist with the blotchy skin and the crooked, oversized glasses. Studies show 67 percent of those guys use that moment of humiliation as inspiration to become arch-villains in superhero movies.)
Flash forward to present day, not long after Iron Man has teamed up with Thor, Captain America, the Hulk and the rest of the Avengers to save New York, and the world, from an alien invasion. There’s no word about where the Avengers are hanging out right now, but Tony’s experience with whole wormhole-Loki thing has left him with a serious case of posttraumatic stress disorder.
This time around, Tony/Iron Man is combatting a real-world threat. A bin Laden-esque terrorist named The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is orchestrating a series of bombings that render dozens of civilians dead or wounded without leaving even the trace of an explosive device. When Tony’s righthand man, Happy (Jon Favreau), is injured in one of the explosions, Tony tells the world he’s going to kill the Mandarin — not because of politics or patriotism, but for oldfashioned revenge. He even gives out his address on national TV. Game on. Director Shane Black, working from a smart if sometimes meandering script, penned with Drew Pearce, takes us on a 3-D thrill ride in which a lot of stuff is blown up, and the skies are filled with superheroes, supervillains and humans falling to their seemingly certain deaths.
One of the most entertaining stretches comes when Tony finds himself in a town in Tennessee, in need of help from a precocious kid whose mom is never around and whose dad disappeared six years ago. Tony’s reaction to the kid’s sad story is one of the most priceless one-liners of the century. As the kid Harley, Ty Simpkins is perfectly cast in a role that could have gone sideways if some kid actor had tried to be cute by half.
Some superhero movies drag when the costume’s back home at the lair, and our guy is out there in the real world, trying to assimilate. Thanks to Downey’s genius, “Iron Man 3” is equally terrific, whether Tony’s fending off an army of villains or bantering with a kid in a shed on a cold, snowy night.