Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Robert Downey Jr, Guy Pearce, Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Rebecca Hall, Stephanie Szostak, James Badge Dale, Jon Favreau, Ty Simpkins, Paul Bettany, Ashley Hamilton, William Sadler, Miguel Ferrer, Shaun Toub, Mark Ruffalo.
Visually the third instalment of Iron Man sums up everything you would expect from the people who have changed the way in which to showcase big budget superhero films. Wonderfully filmed, the senses get rocked and moved beyond experience before and they set out a challenge to D.C. to come up with the goods that would finally see a clean and fair fight between the two superpowers of international comic books. Visually, the film is as near perfect as you can wish for and is perhaps only bettered by the mass ensemble of last year’s The Avengers.
Put visuals aside and there the film starts to lag, suffering from early metal fatigue as the focus on the man behind the iron mask becomes almost Hamlet like. Indeed there is one such moment in the film, whilst enjoyable up to a point but soon becomes laboured, which draws the parallels together like barbed wire. However good an actor Robert Downey Jr. is and to be fair he is probably one of the top five actors working today, the figure of a prince struggling to come with the terms of his father’s murder by his uncle whilst keeping old of his sanity is a world away from the knock about brilliance of the first two films. The scale of the film is perhaps too long and drawn out for it really to be an effective piece.
Take elements of the script out, at least 30 minutes and the film again can be congratulated for having some strong characters who will be sadly missed if this is to be the final instalment of the Iron Man series. Gwyneth Paltrow has been a revelation in the series as Pepper Potts. This film especially saw her come from out of Tony Stark’s/Robert Downey Jr.’s shadow and become a subtle, interesting woman who is more than able to cope with the twin excesses of Iron Man and personal demons of Stark’s life.
Ben Kingsley does something that he hasn’t been able to do for a while and play an immensely likeable character that also is genuinely funny when his time comes. For far too long he has either been in roles that do not by any stretch of the imagination endear him completely to audiences or worse make him seem as though he would never see the heights that he first got to in films such as Ghandi or Schindler’s List.
It is though, thanks to Guy Pearce and Robert Downey Jr. that the film hangs upon. The man in the mask, a psychologist’s dream who in Robert Downey Jr. is captured in all his guts and ego driven glory and who frames his battle scars and weariness from the previous Avengers film so well that the mental reserves he must have faced in portraying the man with Post Traumatic Stress are up there with his performance in Chaplin. Guy Pearce is perfectly cast as the best enemy Tony Stark could have faced in the three films and it is a testament to this British Born actor that he is always there or there abouts when the great gigs come along.
As the man, Robert Downey Jr. works, as Iron Man the film works it is when they take the man out of the suit, the man away from his pain that it starts to fall down.
The film is a good finish to a very well put together trilogy. If this is the end, then perhaps Marvel or whoever owns the name rights will start to look beyond the man in the mask and start developing other characters from the comic stable, others who also deserve the big screen treatment.
Ian D. Hall