Iron Man 3 - 2013

"Iron Man 3" - 2013
Dir. by Shane Black - 2 hrs. 10 min.

Official UK Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There is a beauty to seeing a sequel to an action movie or a super-hero movie: you don't have to waste time establishing characters.  By a third installment in a franchise, either people are on-board, or they've seen enough from the trailers for the previous films to have a ballpark idea of what the characters are like (or you can figure it out in context, of course, if you're willing to miss a couple of continuity-related jokes here and there).  So, instead of screwing around for the first third of a film trying desperately to blend character development with things going ka-boom without sacrificing either too badly.  "Iron Man 3" does this beautifully, jumping straight into the action.  It's also probably the difference between this film being a shade over two hours and it pushing two forty-five.

In Greek mythology, a nemesis is a vengeful spirit that exists to payback hubris.  It's an enemy that one creates from their own actions, and in the months following what happened in New York (which you can see for yourself in a little art-house documentary film called "The Avengers"), Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) begins to reap what he's sown roughly fifteen years in the past.  Stark was badly shaken by New York, and has thrown himself deeply into his work refining the Iron Man costume in order to withdraw from the world.  A series of unusual terrorist bombings, claimed by a "teacher" called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) riles Stark, who issues a personal challenge for The Mandarin to show up at his doorstep.  That goes about as well as you think it would.

Even though this third installment is helmed by a new director (Shane Black, taking over for Jon Favreau), the tone and visual approach isn't radically changed.  Like the first two films, there's a lot of spectacular action, things move along at a very brisk pace, and Downey Jr. motormouths his way through the entire thing.  One of the main differences is that the Iron Man armor almost takes on a second persona separate from Stark; he's in-costume for what feels like a lot less time this time around.  It's not a problem like in other super-hero movies (the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man series, where he's got a secret identity but keeps taking his mask off anyways), Stark is a public figure and has claimed Iron Man as his own.  Instead, it adds a layer to Stark's withdrawal from everything and everyone around him.  Since the armor doesn't provide anonymity (there's a scene where he leaves it parked outside of a restaurant like you'd park a car), there's much less appeal to Stark to being in it.  He'd rather tinker in his lab than engage the world around him.

The mystery of the film (no spoilers, because the plot twists are at least half of the fun here) is one that breaks down over several stages, and culminates in a huge, destructive fight scene that can only take place on the wharf, where there's all kinds of cool, inanimate things that can be wrecked without having to worry about loss of human life (at least on the scale of what happened in "The Avengers").  The villains are people who have been able to regenerate limbs, but it leaves them with the ability to hurl fire and heat up their bodies to explosive levels.  It's a side-effect of the Exogenesis process, which still has a few kinks that need to be worked out before it's ready and available at your local health food store.  But the people who have undergone the process are equal to Iron Man when it comes to combat, which makes for some fun fights.

In terms of the large action pieces, they're completely up to snuff.  The two largest are probably a sequence involving Iron Man saving people who are in free-fall, and the large end fight at the wharf.  I found myself unexpectedly on the edge of my seat for the former, and while the latter has a sense of inevitability (c'mon, it's the end boss battle.  You kinda know how that's got to end), it's a sustained piece of really good action.  The initial attack on Stark's home is pretty good, as well.  And all through it, there are little details to humanize Stark: it's clear his current armor is still in beta testing.  So on the action front, "Iron Man 3" delivers the goods.

Probably the thing that makes "Iron Man 3" most interesting is Stark's character arc; it becomes clear over the course of the movie that Tony Stark is the super-hero, not Iron Man.  Stark isn't amazing because he's got a cool suit of armor that allows him to do super-human things, the armor is an expression of Stark's brilliance.  The events in previous films has shaken his belief in himself, but he's able to understand here that he's the main attraction, that Stark's got the goods even if he's completely unarmed and you let him lose in a Home Depot with a charge card.  His resourcefulness comes back to the forefront like it did in the first "Iron Man" film, and it's a lot of fun to watch the character rediscover exactly what it is that makes him different from other people.

There's almost no way I could imagine someone who enjoyed any of the previous Iron Man appearances not really enjoying "Iron Man 3."  It works even if you haven't seen those movies, the mystery to the story is a very windy road that unfolds in a fun manner, and the villains are formidable.  So far, Marvel's done a great job with every single one of the Avengers string of films, and "Iron Man 3" continues that streak.  Also worth noting, Gwyneth Paltrow totally puts in her time at the gym.

4 / 5 - Theatre 3D

Flight - 2012

"Flight" - 2012
Dir. by Robert Zemeckis - 2 hrs. 18 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

I'm not entirely sure how to approach writing about films who's advertising is pretty much a bait-and-switch. Is it entirely fair to hold the promotional materials against a film?  Advertising, in it's most basic form, is the art of lying.  So should I get mad when it's apparent that I've been lied to?  I guess I'm particularly frustrated in this case, because the sort of film that "Flight" actually is is something that I might have been inclined to go see.  So at least in my instance, it wasn't even necessary to engage in subterfuge and deception to get me in the theatre, and the needlessness of it kind of sticks in my craw.

What the trailer will tell you is this: Whip Whitman (Denzel Washington) is a very skilled pilot, one who's unorthodox maneuver in the face of an emergency saves 96 lives.  But the routine post-crash investigation finds that Whip had some alcohol in his system, which is a no-no.  From this point, it's a man vs. the system movie, with Whip trying to preserve his reputation and career in the face of immense pressure from all sides. And John Goodman rolls in and is awesome, although he comes off as a bit of a huckster in the trailer.

In the actual version of "Flight," not the imagined promised version, the very first scene has Whip drunk and in a hotel room with what turns out to be a co-worker, Katerina (Nadine Velazquez).  While Whip takes a phone call from his ex-wife, Katerina walks around the room stark naked (no complaints here on that account) for like two full minutes.  We learn that Whip is piloting a flight in less than two hours, so he snorts a line of coke to straighten himself out, and heads to the airport.  It's then established that he's kind of a functional alcoholic (and at least initially, that has an almost rogue-ish charm), and then his flight turns into a disaster.

What follows over the course of "Flight" has almost nothing to do with the man-vs.-system story promised, and everything to do with watching Whip's self-destructive behavior play out over and over again.  Oh sure, there's the obligatory scene of Whip pouring all of his intoxicants down the drain (literally), and he tries to straighten himself out on his own, but as soon as he feels the pressure, he's back on the bottle.  At this character's best, he's a wobbly knight on a three-legged horse, but that's just the excuse that keeps Whip from recognizing the awfulness of his own behavior.  And in terms of his awful behavior, this is practically pornography.  The only thing keeping it from being such is the fact that his violence towards everyone else is strictly verbal, and he seems to get the worse of everything (and it's his own fault, as well).  The investigation looms in the background, and comes forth when Whip's lawyer, Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) shows up from time to time, but let's make no mistake about what "Flight" is: this is an addiction story first and foremost.

Secondly, this movie is all about watching Denzel Washington play a raging asshole.  In the trailers, the extent of his addictions and associated behavior is soft-pedaled to the point where you wouldn't be crazy to think you were going to see a movie about a heroic pilot instead of a drunk coke-head.  You might think that John Goodman's character, Harling Mays, is some kind of media spin expert instead of his childhood friend, coke-dealer, and general enabler.  And I'm being honest, I would go see a movie about a seriously unlikable drunk pilot and his coke-dealing sidekick (especially when played by John Goodman).  Maybe a lot of other people wouldn't, but you've got to be honest about the film that you have.  Even if it's a film with big stars made by a very famous director (Robert Zemeckis, also responsible for movies like the "Back to the Future" trilogy, "Contact," "Castaway," and "Forrest Gump," being among his highlights), you have to be honest about what exactly it is that you have on your hands.

Instead, I went in kind of expecting a feel-good story and got Cokehead McGee verbally abusing everyone in sight.  "Flight" is a decent movie, although I'm kind of baffled by all of the praise it's been receiving.  Denzel Washington is very good, but that's not uncommon.  There's a kind of a feel-good ending, but this movie might be more accurately described as a romance triangle movie between Whip, the bottle, and Alcoholics Anonymous.  And honestly, the "rehab ending" is a complete cop-out, as if these kinds of problems are as solvable as taking an aspirin for your headache.  Both John Goodman's and Don Cheadle's roles are minimal, so neither are a good reason to see this film if you weren't already going to.  "Flight" is a slickly directed, very well-acted movie about a bunch of people you're probably going to hate by the time you reach the credits.  Cheadle's lawyer character is possibly the most likable (if not the most sympathetic) character in the film, which says a lot about "Flight."

2 / 5 - Theatre