The Wolverine Review

Before I begin with this review, let me start by saying how much I love the character of Wolverine and Hugh Jackman's portrayal of him.  In every X-Men movie, he always delivers a standout performance.  You really don't have a choice but to enjoy yourself while he's on the screen.  I've read many reviews in which Hugh Jackman is compared to Robert Downey Jr. in the Iron Man series.  It's often difficult to see where the actor ends and the character begins.  I'm a sucker for the combination of bada**ery and snarky comments.  (Yes, I'm editing because I don't swear. Don't judge me.)

That being said, I really could not get into this film.  Let me explain.



The story begins some time after where we left off with The Last Stand.  Logan has become quite the mountain man, trying to escape a world of violence, and is still being haunted by the death of Jean Grey.  His combative personality gets him into a fight with some relatively barbaric local hunters and suddenly a woman steps in and saves the day. Yukio (Rila Fukushima) works for a man named Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), who Logan saved during World War II.  Yashida is now the most wealthy man in Japan, but is dying and wants to say his final goodbyes.

When Logan finally makes it to Japan, he finds out that Yashida actually has ulterior motives for bringing him there.  (Duh)  He offers to take the "burden" of Logan's healing abilities to allow Logan to live a normal life and die a normal death.  Logan's response to his offer is, "Trust me, bub-you don't want what I have", and he leaves Yashida laying there there on his nifty hospital bed. 

 At Yashida's funeral, there is an attempted kidnapping of his granddaughter, Mariko. (Tao Okamoto)  (At this point, much of the reasoning behind this is unclear.)  Logan and Mariko are soon on the run, but he isn't able to heal himself from the minor butt kicking he suffered.  The sudden "humanity" seems to be the doing of the mutant, Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).

That's the general plot.  After this we have a bunch of characters that are quickly added and all that we get in the way of explanation or background is an "Oh, that's so and so".  Logan is often fighting generic henchmen and we don't really get much time with the real villains, which makes it hard to have any real feelings about them either way.  While they are on the run, Logan supposedly falls in love with Mariko, and after what we can only assume were years full of mental anguish over Jean Grey, he decides to abandon the visions of her for this woman he's known for about a day.  It's hard to believe in and of itself, but when paired with the lack of chemistry that the two have, it seems a bit on the ridiculous side.  I'm not even going to get into the fact that Viper was more reminiscent of Poison Ivy in Batman Forever, but not as sexy as Uma Thurman.  

So, after a bit of a rant, I'm going to have to give this one a C+.  I know...I'm probably being harsh, but with all the flaws in the story, and the choppy editing making the fight scenes difficult to watch, that is my final answer.

There ARE some good things, of course.  It's almost a necessity for Hugh Jackman to strip down in these movies, and there's a flash of his bare behind while he's getting a good scrubbing.  *Blush*  There is a pretty sweet action sequence atop a bullet train, though it does end up becoming almost cheesy as it runs just a bit too long.  The cinematography and lighting are lovely and many scenes were very picturesque with gorgeous, vibrant colors.

*This IS a Marvel movie, so stick around until after the credits. I mean it. This is probably the best part of the film.  This scene basically made up for everything that the movie was lacking, and leaves us in breathless anticipation for Days of Future Past.*

If you'd like to see other reviews, Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 66%, and Ian Buckwalter from NPR gave it 5 out of 10 stars.