Iron Man 3 conquers the curse of the 3 in a novel way: It
pretty much takes Iron Man out of the equation. He's in there, obviously
— people would tear down the theater if he weren't.
But Robert
Downey Jr.'s billionaire industrialist Tony Stark doesn't spend much
time in that computer-generated Iron Man suit, which means fewer cut-ins
of Downey's little head inside it, reacting to battles that we know —
no matter how much we want to believe — have no actual human component
whatsoever.
The excellent idea of director Shane Black, who
co-wrote the script with Drew Pearce, is to kick Stark out of his
comfort zone. Instead of throwing money at every problem, Stark has to
function as a lone gumshoe, think like a garage mechanic and, when
necessary, jury-rig something crude — or, as we like to say nowadays,
MacGyver it.
Black directed Downey in 2005, in one of the actor's first post-prison vehicles — Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,
a good, tense Hollywood private-eye spoof. He knows Downey's best
characters have a morbid edge, a mixture of arrogance and self-disgust.
Iron Man 3
begins with a flashback: Stark is telling his story, explaining how his
bad behavior created the demons that would change his life. There was a
conference in 1999; he was trying to seduce a botanist played by
Rebecca Hall, and boorishly blew off a long-haired, partially paralyzed
science nerd named Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce. Killian did
not, to say the least, forget the slight.
Stark behaves no more wisely a decade later, in the movie's present
day. After an explosion in a shopping mall, he sends an on-camera
message to the terrorist — The Mandarin — credited with the attack,
giving out his home address, challenging The Mandarin to come and find
him. "I'll leave the door unlocked," he taunts.
Turns out The
Mandarin — or whoever's behind him — didn't need the key; his attack
helicopters fire missiles through the windows of Stark's high-tech
cliffside manse.
That bombardment has been the stuff of
trailers and TV spots for the past six months, and I can only add that
it's even more impressive in 3-D; that it's fun to see Stark's
girlfriend, Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), in the Iron Man
suit briefly (or at least to see her little head inside, pretending
she's in it); and that the shot where the camera seems to plummet
alongside Stark and what's left of his house is not just a wowza but a
triple-decker wowza with cheese.
Thereafter, Stark is on his
own, without an Iron Man suit or most other superhero paraphernalia, and
he's still having anxiety attacks from that battle in last summer's The Avengers.
It takes a precocious Tennessee adolescent named Harley, played by Ty
Simpkins, to push Stark to rediscover his inner garage-workshop
tinkerer.
As to the nature of the supervillain and his
literally fire-breathing minions, I won't spoil anything. I couldn't if I
wanted to, come to think of it, since I never fully understood their
powers. I didn't care, though: Iron Man 3 has one rollicking
set piece after another, punctuated by unusually good performances from
Downey, Pearce, Don Cheadle as Stark's gung-ho buddy Col. Rhodes, and
especially Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, the true nature of whom I shall
not reveal.
And unlike most comic-book directors, Black
doesn't stint on the killing. An attack on Air Force One has the high
body count of the movie Air Force One. It must be said that the
timing wouldn't seem to be great for a popcorn blockbuster featuring
explosions in American cities, but for better or worse, this kind of
picture always seems to get a pass. The audience needs its fix, and
nothing gets between us and our superheroes.
