4 out of 5

Director: Shane Black

I enjoyed both Iron Man 1 and 2.  One surprised me – as it did many – with its patience in establishing character – and though two was typical of sequel overkill, the consistency of the creative team (and then forming Marvel Universe) buoyed the flick enough above the Summer Blockbuster norm to make it a respectable followup.  After the fun pomp of the Avengers (coming closer to noisy Blockbuster territory but steered with some intelligence thanks to Whedon) and with big and brash Shane Black driving, I knew mostly what to expect with Iron Man 3.  All I hoped was that it entertained.  And it did.  Better than expected, actually, along with getting a lot of mileage out of Tony not-in-suit… yet somehow still stuffing the flick with tons of amazing actions sequences.  It’s even lighter on character than 2, but we have a few films in the bucket to thank for giving these actors plenty of previous on-screenage to guide their performances to have a dash more depth than the script might’ve allotted.  There’s a somewhat cheesy VO wraparound that’ll be familiar to Black followers, but its an acceptable way of a. introducing Killian (Guy Pearce) into Stark’s past as a scientist (heading up a newly formed A.I.M.) Tony gives the snob-off to and b. giving some lead-in before throttling us with a present day scene that shows off Tony’s new auto-guided armor.  Soon the past catches up with Tony and the ante is upped by infecting/blowing up the Iron Man suit such that all of the sequences thereafter show off tons of creativity in coming up with ways that Stark can save the day with a half-functioning prototype suit.  One airfall sequence is, honestly, on of the most exhilarating bits of bluster I’ve seen on screen in quite some time.  The rest of the movie has a pretty awesome twist, a pretty way-over-the-top end sequence, a pretty silly fireworks display, and a really tossed off couple of epilogues.  But, as I said – it entertains, and Black’s hand is deft enough that it doesn’t (directly) insult your intelligence while watching it *cough cough Transformers*.  The flick owes a lot of debt to what came before, but despite an extra-long runtime, IM3 ends up a great cap to a solid trilogy, all three films without the questionable ‘did I enjoy this?’ moments of the Dark Knight series.