Movie Review: Iron Man 3

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Great action and truly developed characters

Cons: Action a little hard to follow a few times in the climax

The Bottom Line:

Favorite Iron Man

Gives us great characters and

Plenty of action

"Which Leaves Me Wondering One Thing - Where's My Sandwich?"

Maybe I needed time to warm up to Iron Man.  Maybe I was just a grump when I saw the first one.  I don't know, but I wasn't that impressed with the original.  But that hasn't stopped me from watching the sequels.  And I have to say that Iron Man 3 is the strongest yet.

In many ways, this is more a sequel to last summer's Avengers than to Iron Man 2.  In fact, as it opens, Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) is working on a new Iron Man suit after having been up for 3 days straight.  If he does try to sleep, he has nightmares of what happened in New York.

But an encounter from his past is going to come back to haunt him as Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) comes back into the life of Tony's girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).  Killian is looking to partner with Stark Industries on a new technology that would aid in human injury recovery.

Meanwhile, a terrorist who calls himself The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) is setting off bombs around the country.  He is promising something big for Christmas Day, which is only a few days away.  Can Tony pull it together to stop him?

I'm going to start in an interesting place for a superhero film - character development.  Honestly, Tony's character was my biggest issue with the first one and still a complaint with the second.  So you can imagine my surprise when I say I genuinely liked the guy here.  And I can now see the arc he's been on since the first one.  Meanwhile, Pepper Potts got some nice development as well.  The rest of the characters?  Not so much, but with those two developed I really felt like I cared about the outcome more than I have before.

Obviously, I thought the acting was great, not only from Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow but the entire cast.

Of course, that's not to say that there wasn't plenty of great action.  There are several edge of your seat scenes, although the climax had a few too many cuts, so it was sometimes hard to tell exactly what was happening.  Those looking for action will be plenty thrilled.

And the special effects?  I for one believed everything I saw, which isn't too surprising these days.

The plot holds together well.  If there were plot holes, I didn't see them.  In fact, I appreciated how they set up several things they used later in the movie.  While they spent a little bit of time setting things up, I didn't feel it was too slow.  It certainly didn't drag after the first 20 minutes or so.

I don't remember the first two movies being this funny.  There were several great lines and a few scenes that really had me chuckling.  No, it's not a comedy, but the laughs were a pleasant surprise.

So I highly recommend going to see Iron Man 3.  It's got heart, action, and a sense of fun.  What else would you want from a superhero movie?