At a solid two hours, it's an exhausting movie. When Downy is on camera, he brings an energy to the dialogue, which really makes every scene a demanding one. I never thought that Iron Man 2 was a weak movie (though I should probably revisit that one) but I still could say that this one is somewhere between the first and the second.
The story is good, and it probably balances nicely between being too complicated, and resolving too cleanly. The characters are built nicely on the foundation of the other movies. The exception is that Happy Hogan is still not quite there. He's still played for comic relief. At least in this one, he does something interesting, but it still doesn't fit into the plot effectively.
Stark is an unusual characters, because he's so completely private. It's hard to say how much of his behavior is an effort to hide, and how much of that behavior is what he honestly is. The result of a character being so secretive is that the smallest personal scenes become much more fulfilling. It's the same with the modern Bond movies. When there's a single quiet moment, and we understand that Bond has certain feelings, it resonates very effectively.
I don't feel quite as great about the main plot of this movie. It seems a little unbalanced. The Mandarin, the attacks, most of that stuff is really strong, and it feels very appropriate for the tone of this movie. Seeing the characters injected with Extremis seem to be more cartoonish than the rest of the movie. I suppose this imbalance was in effect with The Avengers as well, so I don't know how much I could complain.
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