New at the Movies: Iron Man 3, First Position and Identity Thief

Whatever they are pay­ing Robert Downey Jr. to play Iron Man, it is is worth every penny. Iron Man 3, the third instal­ment in his own branch of the Mar­vel Uni­verse series that also fea­tures Cap­tain Amer­ica, The Mighty Thor and The Hulk is hurt­ling towards a bil­lion dol­lars of box office rev­en­ues and might just have broken even on the $200m pro­duc­tion costs by the time you read this.

I’m not sure that there is a bet­ter tech­ni­cian in com­mer­cial cinema than Downey. Even when he is poorly – or not even – dir­ec­ted in films like the last Sher­lock Holmes or the last Iron Man, he is nev­er less than watch­able, but when he is chal­lenged by a dir­ect­or and the mater­i­al he is up there with the best ever. The name Cary Grant just popped in to my head and I think the com­par­is­on is reas­on­able.

This block­buster just hap­pens to be co-writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Shane Black, a lost Hol­ly­wood legend in his own right, whose Kiss Kiss Bang Bang in 2005 restar­ted Mr. Downey Jr.’s career while not doing much for his own. Black wrote the first Leth­al Weapon film in 1987, The Last Boy Scout for Bruce Wil­lis in 1991, Last Action Hero for Arnold in 1993 and then all but dis­ap­peared. He’s lost none of his action movie chops though, as IM3 trucks along with enough explo­sions and wise­cracks to keep any­one happy.

[pullquote]Iron Man 3 is ter­rif­ic enter­tain­ment – the best value for money you’ll find at the mul­ti­plex so far this year[/pullquote]Billionaire Tony Stark is suf­fer­ing from PASD – Post Avengers Stress Dis­order. He can’t sleep, he has anxi­ety attacks and he’s find­ing it hard to show the beau­ti­ful Pep­per Potts (Gwyneth Pal­trow) how much he loves her. To make things worse, the glow­ing blue nuc­le­ar powered shrapnel that keeps his heart beat­ing is slowly pois­on­ing him and an obscure Middle East­ern ter­ror­ist tyr­ant known as The Man­dar­in (Ben Kings­ley) keeps blow­ing shit up.

It’s only with the help of a cute kid sidekick (Ty Simp­kins), the mil­it­ary-badged Iron Man known as “War Machine” (Don Cheadle) and Ms. Potts her­self, that Stark can over­come this mani­ac threat to demo­cracy and recov­er his own peace of mind. Stark is still an ass, of course, but he’s a vul­ner­able ass. That’s Downey Jr.’s geni­us, of course – to hint at the depths of Stark’s sor­row, the little boy try­ing to live up to his Dad’s leg­acy, cov­er­ing it all up with quips and gags.

Iron Man 3 is ter­rif­ic enter­tain­ment – the best value for money you’ll find at the mul­ti­plex so far this year and the rest of this year’s com­ic book capers have a lot to live up to. One word about the great Ben Kings­ley: if RDJ him­self could get an Academy Award nom­in­a­tion for Trop­ic Thun­der, Sir Ben should be on next year’s list for IM3. You heard it here first.

Bal­let doc­u­ment­ary First Pos­i­tion (Bess Karg­man) fol­lows sev­er­al young con­tenders for the pres­ti­gi­ous Youth Amer­ica Grand Prix, for the win­ners a tick­et to schol­ar­ships and careers. The prob­lem is the com­pet­i­tion – it’s massive. Hun­dreds and hun­dreds of kids from 11 to 19 years of age, from all over the world, going through audi­tions, heats and semi-finals before get­ting to strut their stuff in front dozens of judges at one big event in New York City.

As a study in the ded­ic­a­tion and dis­ap­point­ment deman­ded by a life in dance, the film is first rate. The sec­tion on injur­ies alone is as hor­rif­ic as any of the Saw movies. Par­ents temp­ted to intro­duce their babies to bal­let might think again after watch­ing First Pos­i­tion. My beef isn’t with the life, the char­ac­ters or the mes­sage – it’s with the struc­ture of the film itself.

Tak­ing on the will they/won’t they, cliff­hanger form that the great Spell­bound used to such effect back in 2002 (where a bunch of kids vied for the title of America’s Spelling Bee cham­pi­on), this film sets these great and worthy char­ac­ters against each oth­er. They all deserve suc­cess and hap­pi­ness but the com­pet­i­tion ensures that some will fail and I’m not sure that it’s all that sat­is­fy­ing to watch someone you’re root­ing for miss out. And you’re root­ing for them all.

Finally – for the sake of com­plete­ness – Seth Green’s Iden­tity Thief which I have obvi­ously been attempt­ing to erase from my memory since I saw it a couple of weeks ago. In a ver­sion of Den­ver pho­to­graphed entirely by the second unit, fam­ily man and hon­est banker Jason Bate­man dis­cov­ers that his care­fully nur­tured per­fect cred­it rat­ing and unblem­ished crim­in­al record has been stolen by con­science-free miscre­ant who now has access to all his cred­it cards – debased by data­based, if you will.

The per­pet­rat­or is played by Melissa McCarthy who stole so much of Brides­maids in 2011 that she was nom­in­ated for an Oscar. She’s a gif­ted per­former and an obvi­ously tal­en­ted impro­vis­or – as I’m sure Mr. Bate­man would be if he wasn’t simply coast­ing along on the strength of his good nature – but the mater­i­al is so mean-spir­ited and the tar­gets are so cheap that this isn’t a decent show­case for anyone’s tal­ent. Not as empty a ves­sel as the Streisand/Rogen vehicle The Guilt Trip which – in my trau­mat­ised state – I dis­cov­er I also for­got to review.

This post first pub­lished at Dan Slevin’s Funer­als & Snakes blog on Monday 29 April, 2013.