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| Tony Stark keeps his swag after "The Avengers," still run down and tired. Image: Disney/Marvel |
Not since "Lincoln" can I remember being so bored sitting through a movie, and I sat through the Romanian juggernaut, "Beyond the Hills." Of course I wasn't expecting "Iron Man 3" to be a great film by any means, but I'd be damned if I thought it was going to be so boring. A boring action movie. Yes, I've come to learn that they are possible.
Picking up where "The Avengers" ended, Tony Stark is over the moon with his love Pepper, still making infinite number of Iron Man suits, and suffering from PTSD and anxiety after the New York City incident. All of that is put on the back burner when a terrorist named Mandarin rears his ugly head setting off "bombs" all over the world (which is nothing more than people glowing red hot and exploding). Tony is the subject of a massive aerial assault from Mandarin after he gives the terrorist his home address, causing him to flee, unknowingly, to Tennessee.
Then a old flame named Maya (Rebecca Hall) comes back in Tony's life trying to protect him from Mandarin, who is suspected to be working with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). Time to save the world from Mandarin and Aldrich!
Admittedly, action movies are not my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed the first "Iron Man" which was a refreshing action movie that had a perfect blend of explosions, story, comedy and intrigue. Things have certainly turned for the worst since then.
"Iron Man 3" is a bi-polar film, not knowing if it wants to be a comedy or an action film. Almost every line of dialogue Robert Downey Jr. said generated a laugh, which was fine for the first 15 minutes of the film, but man did it get tiring after a while. Being sarcastic and dry is Tony's personality, but he was able to turn it off when things got serious. Now it's like the writers have made him a vehicle for their failed comedy routines and gave all of their bits to Tony to say. Stop trying to make me laugh at your circle jerk of jokes and dazzle me with awesome action sequences already!
The pacing of the film was ungodly slow. There were too many subplots to keep track of involving the bombings, and the film spent too much time investigating each one. And then there's a sequence where he's tied up and tries unsuccessfully to get his Iron Man suit back. Geez, that felt never ending. It trudged along from one ill-conceived story point to the next, with the time in between filled with the franchise's new "forced laughs" dialogue.
The good thing is that unlike "The Avengers'" severely overblown and neverending fights, "Iron Man 3's" were pretty swift in execution and didn't drag on longer than they needed to.
And then there are the erroneous errors that I spotted throughout the film. Near the beginning, Tony's security guy Happy (played by Faverau) accosts everyone to show their badges, but when Pepper walks through she doesn't have a badge on, but she doesn't get a ticking off.
A few moments later, Happy has trouble using an iPad because he admits to not being as technologically advanced as Tony. But then one minute later he can pull out a cell phone and take a great picture of a suspicious vehicle leaving the Stark offices.
Finally, there's the ending of the film during the final showdown. (SPOILER ALERT, sort of) Tony couldn't kill Tony even when he blew up Aldrich, but when Pepper throws Aldrich into a fiery pit, he dies. Ummm, really?
In the world of new comic book super hero movies, "Iron Man 3" has to be one of the most overblown, boring and illogical things ever. Tony should take a break for a good 10 years before donning the suit again, let him take his PTSD more seriously instead of trying to joke about everything.
Rating: D-
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