Not the expected end

Hey, I am back to this blog after ages… maybe after eons. Naah, it feels like I wrote that review to Inception just some days ago… Anyways enough of small talk, let’s get down to why I decided to enter this world of “Random Ramblings” after a long hiatus and a year into my new job (PS: I have left Hyderabad and NIE, New Indian Express, to be elaborate)… So that’s my cue to the new post. Let’s start afresh…

Since today was my off-day (yes, it’s Monday here and I do get it every week, unlike in NIE where even that one holiday was not guaranteed), I got up very early in the morning (9 am is early I tell you), in the hope to catch Iron Man 3 in 3D.

Iron Man 3

Well. for a Monday morning show, the hall was chock-a-bloc for a weekday — mostly the young and the pretty — the ones who talk and shout a lot. But anyways, I was there too to watch the third instalment of this Tony Stark tale. Because I had expected it to be good like many of those in the audience. A fitting end, maybe, to what has been another money-spinning franchise from Marvel and Disney.

But leaving aside the occasional whoops and oohs-aahs from the gangs of teenage girls and guys in the audience for every action sequence and witty one-liners from Robert Downey Jr (aka Tony Stark aka Iron Man), the film felt a bit bland.

I mean it has all the special effects and great action you expect in a superhero movie (in brilliant 3D), with things popping as if right in front of your eyes… But somehow it felt like a movie just meant to grab eyeballs with little but anything coherent happening. I think the director in trying to cram so much into 130 minutes, maybe lost the focus somewhere down the line. Maybe, you don’t expect much of a plot line from a wham-bam flick, but somehow you would have wanted it to move along in a coherent manner.

Take for example, the relationship between Pepper Potts (the smashing Gwyneth Paltrow) and Stark. There was so much potential in that to be developed and moved forward. I mean they have been living together and all and somehow it feels there is no chemistry between them. It feels all too cold.

Cold Chemistry

Then there is the super-villain called Mandarin (Ben Kingsley), against whom Iron Man seems helpless as his posh apartment is blown to smithereens (looks super in 3D) after he threatens the bad guy to come and fight him.

After all the build-up to a grand climax, we find Mandarin is just an actor playing a role and the real villain is Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce), a scientific genius/maniac, who was snubbed by Stark many years back and he takes up a revenge mission to finish him.

Somehow, the roles of Don Cheadle (Major Rhodes) and Kingsley, both super actors, have been wasted and they were not allowed to flourish, except the occasional one-liners.

For the synopsis of the movies here goes IMDB: “Marvel’s “Iron Man 3″ pits brash-but-brilliant industrialist Tony Stark/Iron Man against an enemy whose reach knows no bounds. When Stark finds his personal world destroyed at his enemy’s hands, he embarks on a harrowing quest to find those responsible. This journey, at every turn, will test his mettle. With his back against the wall, Stark is left to survive by his own devices, relying on his ingenuity and instincts to protect those closest to him. As he fights his way back, Stark discovers the answer to the question that has secretly haunted him: does the man make the suit or does the suit make the man?” ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1300854/)

All in all it was a good movie with its mind-blowing special effects and the Iron Man-humour, but somehow I did not get a solid “thunk” from this Iron Man.