Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Guy Pearce, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall and Don Cheadle.
Distributor: Walt Disney Pictures
Runtime: 129 mins. Reviewed in May 2013
| 
| 
Fans of Marvel Comics and their film versions will feel that Tony Stark is an old acquaintance. This is the third Iron Man film but Stark was also one of The Avengers in that very successful film of 2012. We remember him as a brash young man, inheritor of a company than encouraged innovations where he made suits that enabled him to confront villains and save the world.
The film begins with him telling the story of New Year’s Eve 1999 in Berne where he was with a scientist Maya (Rebecca Hall) and was accosted by a wild-looking man whom he stands up after promising to meet him. Obviously a bad move.
Robert Downey Jr is a screen master of the sardonic screen presence who can toss of jokey references and one-liners but who can also be charming. He has made the character of Tony Stark his own. Actually, he seems to have settled down with Pepper Potts (Gwynneth Paltrow) but then his seaside mansion is attacked and destroyed and he suffers panic attacks and disappears.
In the meantime, a scrawny-looking character who calls himself The Mandarin, who looks like a cut rate Osama Bin Laden (Ben Kingsley chewing the scenery), cuts into television programs with threats and an on-screen killing, wanting to taunt the American president (William Sadler). Tony Stark is not quite ready to resume action, especially when he is accosted by strange men and women whose limbs and face light up like smouldering charcoal.
We are not surprised when the wild-looking man from the past turns up and takes responsibility. He is played with satisfying mad villainy by Guy Pearce. Maya has sold out to him and he is transforming war-disabled veterans into fiery weapons.
Colonel Rhodes (Don Cheadle) is back, using Stark-invented suits to fly to trouble areas. Speaking of suits, Tony Stark has quite a wardrobe of suits to pick from, not all of them top quality, some quite breakable, and relies on in his invisible valet (voiced by Paul Bettany) to dress him with the suits, part by part. This does complicate things when Tony is captured and when he ultimately has to face the villain.
Jon Favreau, who directed the first two films, is a letter-of-the-regulations security man who has a weakness for episodes of Downton Abbey. Ben Kingsley’s The Mandarin turns out to be a different villain, with some unexpectedly funny sequences. In fact, there are some funny episodes (like that of the gob-smacked adulation fan who helps Tony) and some funny lines.
Which all seemed quite entertaining – until one reads the angry and disappointed fans who have blogged their displeasure at this sequel. It seems they want action rather than humour – perhaps they need to lighten up. After all they are only comic strips on screen, not dramatic realism.
12 Random Films…
