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.