FILM REVIEW OF ''THE WOLVERINE" (2013)

Let me say up front without apology that “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” qualified as a fantastic piece of formulaic fodder.  Before I saw director James Mangold’s “The Wolverine,” I watched “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” again and wondered how anybody could top such a tour-de-force tale.  “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” boasted everything that a blockbuster movie requires: charismatic heroes, wicked villains both human and mutant, larger-than-life spectacle, tearful romance, treacherous betrayal, and histrionic revenge.  During its first weekend, this Marvel mutant masterpiece coined over $85 million.  Ultimately, it grossed $373 million globally.  Comparatively, “The Wolverine” raked in only $55 million during its first weekend.  Analysts had predicted $70 million.  Not surprisingly, “The Wolverine” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) isn’t half as entertaining as the incomparable “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.” Although James Mangold is a gifted director, “The Wolverine” ranks below his other epics.  He directed the brilliant Johnny Cash & June Carter biopic “I Walk the Line,” the complex Sylvester Stallone crime drama “Copland,” the gritty western remake “3:10 to Yuma” with Russell Crowe & Christian Bale, the aggressive Tom Cruise actioneer “Knight and Day,” and the critically acclaimed chick flick “Girl, Interrupted.”  Mangold isn’t a high-profile, Oscar winning, celebrity director whose name sells tickets like Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron.  Capable and competent, Mangold has proven to be only as good as his material.  This above-average but uneven Twentieth Century Fox release suffers from undistinguished villains and a storyline that stalls out several times during its indulgent 129-minute running time.  Mangold excels when depicting the Wolverine’s woes.  Unfortunately, scenarists Mark Bomback of “Unstoppable” and Scott Frank of “Minority Report” have concocted a pedestrian yarn that doesn’t broaden our knowledge of the protagonist.    

Ostensibly, Bomback and Frank adapted Marvel’s limited-run “Wolverine” series written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Frank Miller back in 1982.  Apparently, neither Bomback nor Frank fretted about fidelity to the source material.  They’ve altered several things for the worst, including Logan’s reason for visiting Japan.  Basically, “The Wolverine” is a sequel to “X-Men: The Last Stand,” not “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”  The early part of the film differs from the limited series graphic novel.   First, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen of “GoldenEye”) invades Logan’s dreams.  (If you’re hoping Jean will play an integral role in “The Wolverine,” prepare to be disappointed.  She appears, vanishes, reappears, and then keeps on annoying Logan one time too often.  The “Wolverine” limited run series contained a reference to Jean Grey, but Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summers worried more about her than Logan.  Second, Wolverine is camping in the woods and grieving over Jean’s death when he encounters a huge grizzly bear.  Later, a hunter shoots this bear with a poisonous arrow but the bear doesn’t die.  In the comic, Wolverine plunges into the bear’s den to kill it after it has slain several people.  In “The Wolverine,” he finds the poor bear and puts it out of its misery before heading off to confront the hunter.  Third, unlike Bomback and Frank, Claremont and Miller didn’t knit World War II, Nagasaki, and Wolverine’s saving an enemy officer into their narrative.  

“The Wolverine” unfolds on August 9, 1945, when the atomic bomb struck Nagasaki.  Across the bay from the city, the Japanese military maintain a prison camp.  The Wolverine, Logan (Hugh Jackman with his signature mutton chops), is sweating it out in solitary confinement when the atomic bomb falls.  (In “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” Logan participated in the American Civil War, World War I, World War II in Europe, and The Vietnam War.  Evidently, our hero must have been re-deployed to the Pacific after he helped vanquish the Nazis in Europe.)  Anyhow, Logan saves Japanese prison camp officer, Yashida (Ken Yamamura), after his three superiors commit ritual suicide.  Miraculously, Yashida and Wolverine survive the historic blast.  The Wolverine looks like a scorched pepperoni pizza. Our hero’s regenerative powers, however, enable him to heal completely without a scratch.  Yashida escaped certain death through the Wolverine’s intervention.  The prison camp officer emerges with a facial scar as a testament to his presence at the blast.  

 

In “The Wolverine,” the 68-year old Yashida refuses to succumb to death.  He has a doctor, Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkov), who keeps tabs on his health.  The affluent Yashida is the CEO of a lucrative, global, electronics empire.  He dispatches his daughter’s friend to find the Wolverine.  The agile, pink-haired, sword-wielding Yukio (Rila Fukushima) tracks him down to a bar in Canada as he is poised to eviscerate the bear hunter.  Yukio convinces Logan to fly with her to Japan to see Yashida.  Meantime, the comic took a different path.  After he deals with the hunter in the bar, Wolverine winged his way to Japan because his girlfriend Mariko had stopped talking to him.  When he arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun, Wolverine discovered that Mariko wanted nothing to do with him.  Mariko’s gangster father Lord Shingen has come back into her life.  Moreover, Shingen has forced her to marry another man so he can dominate the Japanese Underworld.  At this point, Wolverine found himself up to his ears in Yakuza.

Hugh Jackman reprises his role as the tortured but sympathetic Logan for the sixth time.  The Wolverine is the only fully developed character in this mundane melodrama.  Meantime, the villainous Yashida emerges as a lackluster adversary who only wants to acquire Logan’s ability to withstand the effects of aging.  In the long run, the beautiful but bland Viper does little more than deceive Logan.  In the limited run series, all the X-Men showed up for our hero’s triumphant return.  Apart from one other character, Logan is the only mutant.  Mangold and company make their worse mistake when they pit Logan against well-armed humans who don’t have a chance in combat.  Mercifully, nothing is easy for our hero who comes full circle by fade-out.  The best scene occurs after the end credits of this half-baked hokum.  Despite its slick production values, the anti-climatic “Wolverine” comes up short as a seminal superhero saga.

FILM REVIEW OF ''X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE" (2009)

Seldom does Hollywood produce a comic book prequel as potent and perfect as “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” (**** out of ****), a no-holds-barred barrage of CGI visual effects, and brawny brain-dead, derring-do that will overwhelm you with its sheer extravagance in less than 120 minutes—actually a trim 107 minutes. “Tsotsi” director Gavin Hood and savvy scenarists David Benioff of “Troy” and Skip Woods of “Swordfish” shove enough testosterone into this larger-than-life spectacle to fuel an entire franchise. After the anemic as well as dismal closure that Brett Ratner’s “X-Men: Last Stand” provided the “X-Men” trilogy, “X-Men: Wolverine” brings you back to life like a shot of adrenalin to the heart. Reprising the role that make him a household name, a mutton-chopped Hugh Jackman wields the razor-sharp knuckle knives that he deploys like a Cuisinart in the original “X-Men” to slash and gash anybody and anything that gets in his way. Like any really good prequel, “Wolverine” brings the action full-circle so that we learn how Professor Charles Xavier wound up with many of the wards that he supervises in director Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” (2000). Mind you, “Wolverine” lacks the subtlety that distinguished the first two “X-Men” movies, but this prequel makes up for it with high-octane, slam-bang, edge-of-your-seat, action sequences that make your blood pump.

Essentially, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is a melodrama about two mutants that traces their origins back to Canada's Northwest Territory in the year 1845. As the two half brothers, James Logan (Hugh Jackman of “Australia”) and his older, more unstable semi-sibling Victor Creed (Live Schreiber of “Scream”) flee from their family in Canada and seek refuge south in America after Logan kills the man that he believes is his father. Hood and his scribes spend more time probing the back story of the highly conflicted Logan from his turbulent childhood to his tragic romance with a school teacher. Nevertheless, every episode of Logan’s life entwines with that of his unruly brother who suffers from anger management issues. Yes, eventually, Victor will become known as ‘Sabretooth,’ but for now he is just Victor. The credit sequence depicts our pugnacious pair--Logan and Victor--displaying their extraordinary strength, nimble dexterity and protean ability to regenerate no matter how devastating their wounds as they wade through the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam. Logan exerts more control over his bestial nature, while Victor wallows in his blood lust for death and violence, even when it prompts him to turn on his own men.

In Vietnam, Victor plunges off the deep end. He murders innocent Vietnamese civilians as well as American G.I.s. The Army slaps both Logan and him in front of a firing squad. Of course, these indestructible killing machines cannot die from ordinary bullets. They survive the firing squad’s fusillade but find themselves chained up again until General William Stryker (a nefarious Danny Huston of “The Aviator” at his oiliest) persuades them to be "part of a special team with special privileges.” (Incidentally, Brian Cox played an older Stryker in “X-Men 2.”) This black-bag, covert operations unit called Team X consists of fellow mutants, including Wade Wilson/Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds of “Blade: Trinity”), Agent Zero (Eurasian newcomer Daniel Henney), Wraith (novice Will.i.Am), Fred J. Dukes/The Blob (Kevin Durand of “Smokin’ Aces”) and Bradley (Dominic Monaghan of TV’s “Lost”) and resembles a mutant “Magnificent Seven.” For the record, Wade Wilson is a wizard with a sword. Agent Zero handles pistols like a gunman from a John Woo shoot-up with Chow Yun-Fat. For example, after he empties both magazines in his automatic pistols, he drops the clips, sends his sidearms somersaulting into the air like Wild Bill Hickok, snatches two fresh clips from his belt, and jams them into the grips as the guns fall spinning into his fists. Wraith specializes in teleporting. He’s somewhere one second and another place a second later. Bradley handles electricity like a conjurer.

During a bloodbath of a massacre in Nigeria, Logan quits Team X and masquerades back home in Canada as a ordinary, everyday lumberjack who has settled down with a luscious schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) with has a knack for getting people to do what she wants, including muscle-bound Logan. Meanwhile, Logan wants nothing to do with his angry half-brother, but the bond between Logan and Victor proves to be stronger than even they imagined. Moreover, Victor isn’t content to let Logan skip out on him and he sets out to track him down with predictable results that forces Logan to confront his bestial nature on grounds that he cannot control. The treacherous Stryker lures Logan back to his laboratory and convinces him to participate in his highly hush-hush program Weapon X and Logan is reborn as Wolverine with an impenetrable alloy known as adamantium that makes him indestructible. Raving like the usual mad scientist, Stryker informs everybody about how he is going to create an army of these killers, but he forgets that Logan can hear him. Logan succumbs to his beastly nature, transforms into Wolverine, bursts out of the tank, and takes off.

Director Gavin Hood attracted praise for his first effort “Tsotsi,” a formidable drama set in South Africa about a teenage hoodlum who discovered an infant and shielded it from the elements. Hood’s second movie “Rendition” with Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal withered, but “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” finds Hood back in top form. Hood stages several incredible as well as outrageous combat sequences between not only Wolverine and Victor but also Wolverine and other antagonists. The violence is the stuff of far-out fantasy with no relation to anything realistic. Hood manages to juggle multiple characters with ease so that we’re never confused about who is trying to smackdown whom. Marvel Comic’s purists may quibble about the liberties that Hood and his writers take with the source material, but “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” qualifies as a first-rate, old-fashioned smackdown that will keep you rooting for the hero through thick and thin.