Iron Man 3

Robert Downey Jr’s tipping point as a box office draw, I think, was 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The potential was always there, admittedly: take Air America, for instance, or his Oscar-nominated turn in Chaplin. But it took the Shane Black written and directed black comedy of errors to confirm that Downey is at his most reliable and entertaining when playing to his strengths: cocky, charming, droll, deadpan and just that little bit out on the edge. Most of his films since have worked on a variant of this theme, which makes sense. Once you’ve found the winning formula, it makes no sense to go out your way to ruin it…

Downey and Black reunite for Iron Man 3, the first of this summer’s run of multiplex-fillers. We last saw Iron Man in last year’s The Avengers, narrowly escaping death from hurtling to earth after some complicated shenanigans. These things sit heavily on men and even supermen, as we discover. The Tony Stark that we meet at the beginning of Iron Man 3 is a multi-millionaire in search of his lost mojo. Most men in this position will simply sulk in the basement, or make a nuisance of themselves to their nearest and dearest. In this case, we instead have Downey’s Stark tinkering with the latest iteration of his best known creation – Iron Man Mk 42, since you ask – and driving his girlfriend and CEO of Stark Industries, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) to distraction.

Meanwhile, the United States is grappling with the threat posed by the Mandarin, a very post-modern terrorist, with very pre-modern methods: rebranding Iron Man’s old comrade in arms, War Machine (Don Cheadle), as the Iron Patriot (Don Cheadle), and hoping for the best. Red, White and Blue armour always does the trick. (I should say at this point that whilst it is perfectly possible to watch and enjoy Iron Man III without prior knowledge, a vague awareness of the franchise’s back story helps a little.) Lingering all the while is the oleaginous Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), whose Advanced Ideas Mechanics wants to coax Stark Industries into collaborating on Extremis – an advanced, experimental regenerative treatment very useful for people recovering from critical injuries. Soldiers, for instance.

The success of the Iron Man franchise rests squarely on Downey’s tin shoulders: for this reason, the rather fantastical underpinnings of Iron Man III never trouble so long as Downey is left to his own devices. Support acting is largely anonymous, Ben Kingsley’s delightfully self mocking turn as a failed English actor turned global terrorist aside. Special effects, as always, are spectacular without quite becoming overwhelming. Efficiency is the order of the day: not quite with Iron Man himself though, whose technical lapses force ol’ Tin-Head out of his shell and into relying on his own ingenuity for a good chunk of the film.

Iron Man 3 works well, I think, for two reasons. First, after the extra-terrestrial distractions of The Avengers (assuming, for a moment, that it is reasonable to describe Norse Gods thus), the film returns Stark to a recognisable scenario that never particularly stretches credulity.

(Right. So the notion of a guy in a tin suit who routinely saves humanity from itself three times a week, and gets to have dinner with Gwyneth Paltrow doesn’t stretch credulity? Fair point.)

Beyond this, Black’s script is sharp and genuinely funny. The occasional sleights-of-hand strive valiantly to distract from narrative gaps, the film as a whole has a compactness and cohesiveness that  The Avengers, in particular, lacked. And it is helpful to think about the two films alongside one another: The Avengers, to my mind, dragged on a bit because there were two many radioactively-charged cooks to spoil the broth. With Iron Man 3, we have Downey/Stark all to ourselves. There isn’t any better way to have it.