Movie: Iron Man 3

Iron Man 3: the latest Robert Downey, Jr. installment.  My one sentence review: installment 3 is better than installment 2 but substantially short of installment 1.  This installment involves a character named The Mandarin.  For those of you who read the Marvel comics, you will remember The Mandarin as a racist character invoking a Fu Manchu image.  With Ben Kingsley playing the part, this is a very different character from the Marvel presentation, and Kingsley’s performance is one of the highlights of this film.  The introduction of The Mandarin character presents an Osama bin Laden-like bomber who has the technological ability to take over the television airwaves and broadcast a mass bombing live.  With Boston events still lingering in our memory banks, certain early scenes provoked an uneasy feeling.   After Downey’s character, Tony Stark, issues a mano a mano challenge to The Mandarin, Stark’s Pacific Ocean mansion is destroyed.  Of course, Stark survives and the rest of the film is his comeback victory.  When Downey is on the screen without the mask, the film is entertaining.  A fun interlude is an interaction that occurs after the house bombing when Stark finds himself in Tennessee and meets up with a fatherless kid played by Ty Simpkins.  As in certain scenes with Kingsley, the elements not going boom work.  Unfortunately , we have too much time spent with things blowing up and the ending sequence is way too long.  Also, the truly evil character is a mad scientist named Aldrich Killian, played by Guy Pearce, and he is not credible.  Aldrich’s evilness is partly Stark’s fault because he stood him up a few years earlier by failing to keep an appointment.  Aldrich is out for revenge.  Gwyneth Paltrow plays Stark’s girlfriend, Pepper Potts, and is given some macho scenes in the drawn out ending to this 129 minute movie.  The director is Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”) and he is given credit as co-scriptwriter.  Whoever is responsible for the Simpkins character and the remake of The Mandarin deserves praise.  Bottom line is that if you are a fan of watching comic book characters turned into movie heroes, there is enough good stuff in this movie to make it an enjoyable experience.  Downey makes the Stark character likeable and that is a key component.  Editing down the quantity of the boom-boom scenes would have made for a better movie.  With the huge gross revenue for this film, there will be an Iron Man 4.  As long as Downey is playing Stark, I will continue to watch the Iron Man films.