- UK release: April 2013
- Director: Shane Black · Writers: Drew Pearce, Shane Black
- Studio / distributor: Marvel Studios; Walt Disney
- Genre: Superhero action thriller / technology adventure · Runtime: 130 minutes (BBFC 12A)
- Main cast: Robert Downey Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes) as Tony Stark; Gwyneth Paltrow (Se7en, Shakespeare in Love) as Pepper Potts; Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda) as James Rhodes; Ben Kingsley (Gandhi, Sexy Beast) as Trevor Slattery
- Rotten Tomatoes: 79% critics / 78% audience · My rating: 8 / 10
There is a particular kind of pressure on the film that has to follow The Avengers. Marvel has just proved that the whole crossover gamble works, the numbers are absurd, and the obvious move is to make every solo film feel like a piece of the bigger machine. Instead Marvel handed the keys to Shane Black, the man who wrote Lethal Weapon and then directed Downey in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and Black has done something close to the opposite. He has taken the largest franchise in cinema and shrunk it back down to a story about one rattled man, his house, and the question of whether the suit is the hero or the bloke inside it.
The setup
Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is not coping. New York happened, the wormhole happened, and a man who built his identity on being the smartest person in any room cannot sleep, tinkering through the small hours and quietly coming apart. Into this walks the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), a televised terrorist staging attacks that the authorities cannot trace, and a charming science entrepreneur with a regenerative technology called Extremis that does not behave the way its investors were promised. When the threat lands on Tony’s own doorstep it strips him of almost everything that made him Iron Man, and the film becomes the story of what is left when you take the toys away. I will leave the Mandarin where the trailers left him, because the turn that follows is the thing people will be arguing about on the way out.
The cast
Downey has played this man four times now and he has never been looser or, oddly, more exposed. The wisecracks are still landing, but they are doing different work here, papering over panic attacks rather than radiating invulnerability, and Downey plays the cracks beautifully. Gwyneth Paltrow finally gets to do more than worry from a doorway, with Pepper pulled into the action in a way the earlier films kept promising and never delivered. Don Cheadle and Downey have the easy, needling rhythm of two men who have known each other for years, which is exactly the buddy-movie chemistry Black trades in. Then there is Ben Kingsley, who gives the Mandarin a genuinely unsettling gravity early on and then, well, earns every penny in the back half. A child actor, Ty Simpkins, turns up as Tony’s reluctant sidekick and, against the odds, is not annoying.
The craft
Black writes the way he always has, in sharp cross-talk and sudden tonal swerves, and he is not afraid to let a superhero film be funny in the dry, adult register of his nineties thrillers. He also sets the thing at Christmas, because of course he does. John Toll’s photography keeps the action legible, and there is a genuinely thrilling mid-air rescue sequence that depends on physics and timing rather than a city being thrown at the screen. Brian Tyler’s score is muscular without drowning the jokes. The Extremis effects, glowing bodies that run hot and heal, give the action a nasty edge the suits-punching-suits routine usually lacks. If anything sags it is the final act, where the obligation to deliver a big metal climax pulls against the smaller, smarter film underneath.
How it stacks up
Set it beside the first Iron Man and you see what Jon Favreau started and Black has sharpened: the series has always been more interesting as a character study of a clever, damaged man than as a parade of armour. This is a long way from the muddled Iron Man 2, and it is closer in spirit to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang than to The Avengers, a private-eye comedy that happens to have rocket boots. The comparison Black clearly cannot resist is Lethal Weapon: two mismatched men, a conspiracy, a body count and a lot of banter, all decorated with fairy lights. As a piece of franchise management it is the bravest of the solo films so far, precisely because it refuses to behave like an episode of a serial.
Critics versus the rest of us
Critics are largely on board, around 79%, praising Downey and Black’s wit and the decision to make the strongest Stark the one with the dented confidence. Audiences are a touch cooler, sitting near 78%, and the fault line runs straight through the Mandarin. For a chunk of the fanbase the twist is a betrayal of a comic-book heavyweight; for me it is the cheekiest and most Shane Black thing in the film, a joke about fear and image that fits the anxious, what-is-really-behind-the-mask story he is telling. You can dislike it and still see the craft in it.
Verdict
This is the Iron Man film that remembers the suit was always less interesting than the man. It is funny, it is nervier than a tentpole this size has any right to be, and it gives Downey his richest run at the character yet. The metal-on-metal finale is the weakest stretch and the Mandarin gag will cost it some goodwill, but neither dents the pleasure of watching a real writer-director smuggle a buddy thriller into a billion-dollar machine. It rewards a rewatch, it knows exactly what it is doing, and it is far better than its problem-child reputation suggests. 8⁄10.
Availability: On general release in UK cinemas now, in 2D and 3D, with IMAX screenings worth seeking out for the airborne set piece.
Update
Added since this review first appeared: the Mandarin gag refused to die, and Marvel later staged a half-apology in the All Hail the King short before bringing a “real” version of the character into Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021). Downey carried Tony Stark through to Avengers: Endgame (2019), which gives the anxiety running under this film a longer arc than it could have known. As the only solo Marvel entry directed by Shane Black, it has aged into a cult favourite among people who like their blockbusters with a writer’s fingerprints on them. It streams on Disney+ and is widely available on 4K, Blu-ray and digital.
BBFC content advice
Rated 12A by the BBFC for moderate violence, threat and language. The notes below may contain spoilers.
Violence: There are some intense action scenes in which the heroes and villains battle, delivering punches and blows and attacking each other with weapons. The violence is highly stylised, with no realistic injury detail.
Threat and horror: Moments of more realistic violence and threat are very brief. Acts of terrorism are shown, including innocent people being vapourised, and a plane being destroyed.
Language: There is some moderate language, such as ‘dick’, ‘wankers’ and ‘spazzed out’, used non-discriminatorily. There are also milder terms including ‘crap’, ‘God’, ‘ass’, ‘hell’, ‘bloody’, ‘pissed off’, ‘son of a bitch’, ‘jerk’ and ‘shit’.
Sex: The film also contains infrequent mild sex references and innuendo.
Injury detail: There is some sight of blood in the aftermath of violence but no realistic injury detail.
Additional issues: Adult characters drink alcohol.
Source: British Board of Film Classification (bbfc.co.uk).
