Iron Man 3 (2013), PG-13, 3 stars

Downey Jr. as Stark sitting next to his invention, Iron Man.

Iron Man was so fantastic that it spawned a few sequels. Does that mean the trend will work? Not many sequels will work unless the director and writers create a brilliant and different storyline and not make a carbon copy of the predecessor. Let give me you a few examples of great sequels: The Godfather Part II, Aliens, T2, The Dark Knight, Lethal Weapon 2, Toy Story 2 and 3. All of them had brilliance in the storyline. The second Iron Man was ok with a forgettable villain, but the third one redeems itself with a great performance and some flashy humor, but a ridiculous plot twist and a flawed climactic fight sequence.

The movie starts with a sort of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang style with Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) narrating a past memory and then rewinding his past to start over. He recalls a memory of a New Year's party in 1999 where he was in a relationship with Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), inventor of Extremis, a regenerative treatment that allows crippled people to recover from injuries. Stark meets Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a scientist offering him a place in his company, Advanced Idea Mechanics. He tells Killian to meet him on the roof, but Stark rejects him.

In the present day, Tony has panic attacks after the events of the alien attack in New York from The Avengers. During that time, he has built dozens of Iron Man suits. His relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a little unbalanced due to his insomnia and weird emotions. The Mandarin (Sir Ben Kingsley) has bombed some building and intelligence agencies are bewildered with not a lot of forensic evidence.

As Happy Hogan, Stark Instudries' security chief, was injured in the attack, Stark issues a warning to the Mandarin to fight. The Mandarin replies with a sensational helicopter attack at Stark's mansion allowing him in an Iron Man suit to drown and let Potts survive the wreckage. Stark escapes and lands in rural Tennessee and without his Iron Man suit to return to California, the world believes that he is dead. He teams with a 10-year-old boy, Harley, to help him investigate an explosion and repairing his suit.

Sir Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin.

This movie does not provide a lot of action than I thought. There are basically three or four action sequences, and one in the beginning was pretty good. Robert Downey Jr. seemed a bit tired of his character in a few scenes but he starts to become entertaining when teaming up with the boy. Those were the best scenes in the movie providing humor and intelligence. Stark talks to him like another person, not just as another kid.

All of the trademark jokes are there. Some work and some don't, but the some that do work are hilarious. The tone of the movie is light with some disturbing elements of the effects of Extremis and the bombings. At times, some of the energy from the original kicks back in the early scenes but dies down in the far end of the movie.

Paltrow does more in the film than usual and is pretty good. Kingsley is dynamite as the Mandarin making you believe that he is threatening. Don Cheadle is entertaining as always when talking and playing jokes with Stark. Rebecca Hall and Guy Pearce do not really do anything new in their roles, especially Hall, who is a really good actress.

The first two acts were pretty good until we get to the third act revealing the plot twist which was frustrating because it does not hold up to the comic book. The climactic action sequence does not serve any purpose to the plot. It is exciting to watch, but it is exciting fluff. The movie is better than the second one and the movie holds up as an entertaining super hero movie. Shane Black, the director, did a solid job bringing some of the freshness of the original to this movie.

***