The original Iron Man struck unexpected gold with a difficult-to-replicate mixture of comic book heroics and the pinwheeling, heavily improvised charm of Robert Downey Jr. (Part 2, with its barely there plot and seemingly free-form staging, may be the closest we'll ever come to a superhero Rat Pack movie.) The third installment in the trilogy certainly doesn't rein in the now familiar quirks of its star--has there ever been a costumed hero who spends less time in costume?--but manages to raise the stakes enough to find an engaging balance between character and action. Loosely based on the Extremis comic arc by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov, the plot finds Tony Stark struggling to adjust to life after the multidimensional events of The Avengers. As he attempts to regain his footing and keep his relationship with Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), a new threat emerges, in the form of a domineering high-tech terrorist called the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley, whose stutter-step vocal pattern helps create one of the darndest villains in recent memory). Director Shane Black, who previously worked with Downey in the cult favorite Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, takes an intriguing detective story approach to the material, emphasizing the hero's deduction skills over extended scenes of CGI combat. When it does come time to armor up, though, the film delivers the goods, most notably in a scene involving a midair rescue that stands as the best action sequence in the entire series. The main draw, however, remains Downey, whose motor-mouthed, engagingly narcissistic characterization keeps things firing on all cylinders, particularly when balanced out by performances from folks like Guy Pearce, Rebecca Hall, and the terrifically hissable James Badge Dale. If this is indeed the capper to the series, it's going out in high style. --Andrew Wright