Iron
Man 3 was a clogged up, fidgety, ejaculating bit of huffing that more or less reflects director Shane Black's film work so far, the principle examples being the
homicidal idiocy that was (and remains) Lethal Weapon, as we the painfully
self-aware, winking-at-the-audience faux noir effort Kiss Kiss Bang
Bang. Black seems to content on being a hip Michael Bay, or an idiot's
version of Quentin Tarantino.
Tellingly, lead actor Robert Downey Jr
seems distracted through out the affair, listless even; fitting for a
movie about a super hero who depends on what is essentially a robot suit
to fight improbable villains and moronically conceived threats to the
world (or at least New York City, given that this is a Marvel property),
Downey clicks into default selection of mannerisms, vocal inflections
and registers and spastic body language. To be sure, the action
sequences and the special effects are nicely rendered and deployed, but
this leads us into the realm of "so what", by
which I mean that it is harder to admire films for technical competence
in genre required scenes--in this case, further destruction of urban landscape. All the sequences look good , the way motel room
"looks good" or elevator music "sounds pretty".
For the rest, Iron Man 3
managed to be nerve-rattling erratic and tedious at the same time, as
in someone suggested, it seems, that they try for some of that Chris
Nolan "darkness" the worked effectively in his Dark Knight trilogy;
we have a Tony Stark who appears beset by Billionaire's Angst, the
worst kind you can get, where in he seems to realize that nothing he can
build or spend money on will give him peace of mind or happiness.
Interestingly, one of Iron Man's most problematic villains, The Mandarin,
is the looming threat in this movie as Stark/ Iron Man tries to quip
his way out of his encroaching depression; created in the early Sixties,
the Mandarin is a villain that collects all the stereotypes of nasty,
slant-eyed Asian geniuses who have plans to enslave the West.
In the
film he is portrayed by Ben Kingsly, the Asian characteristics are
smoothed out of his appearance--you really cannot tell what nationality,
religion or culture the movie Mandarin represents--and align him
vaguely with Bin Ladin and other terrorists who have historically
complicated death wishes for The West. At this point we might have had
an interesting, complicated villain to contend with, an evil man who's
nastiness has a nuanced rationale. This didn't happen. In keeping with a
movie that keeps your attention jerking from action scenes that are as
senseless as Battle Bots being played with by meth heads in steel
storage container and scenes that are dime store pathos, lugubrious and
reeking like a man who's waited to long to take a bathroom break, the
true nature and meaning of the Mandarin is revealed in a way that tells
you that time and money were getting tight as a carnie's lips wrapped
around a Marlboro 100.
