Iron Man 3

Directed by Shane Black

(PG-13)

***

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Robert Downey Jr. “should earn awards consideration” for his latest superhero sequel, said Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times. Even as he marks a half decade in his occasional role as a billionaire playboy who fights evil in his Iron Man suit, the 48-year-old actor is “just plain great”—as compelling when battling an army of villains as when bantering with a boy in small-town Tennessee. He’s “arguably a lot better than the movie around him,” and yet the whole project exceeds expectations, said Andrew O’Hehir in Salon.com. A film like this mostly just needs to steer its hero and villains toward a series of spectacular confrontations, but the supporting cast turns in good work too, particularly Ben Kingsley, who brings “delicious” fervor to a bin Laden–like terrorist known as the Mandarin. But something’s not right about any blockbuster that invokes the war on terror, then waves off its grim realities “with a wink and a smile,” said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. A superhero film shouldn’t be prohibited from addressing real-world fears, but “it should take on the tough issues, not just exploit them.”