The Wolverine

I love Wolverine. Growing up my three favorite superheroes were Spider Man, Wolverine and Johnny Storm. In any X-Men video game, or Marvel video game that exists, Wolverine is always my favorite player. As a got older and started to understand comic book mythology better and grasped character and tone and all of these other terms that exist in the world of fiction, I grew to love Wolverine even more. The X-Men movies of the early 2000s began the comic book movie revolution. Yes, Sam Raimi's Spider Man proved they could be the most successful movies, but if Bryan Singer's X-Men had been a failure, who knows if anyone would have taken much of a chance on the entire genre the way they have now. Remember,, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin kind of destroyed the genre there for a while. Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is without question, my favorite Superhero performance. Robert Downey Jr. makes a perfect Tony Stark, and I cannot imagine anyone else doing that, but RDJ kind of is Tony Stark. Hugh Jackman, in interviews and appearances, does not appear anything like Wolverine AND he perfectly captures my idea of what Wolverine is, what my idea of Wolverine has always been. I am pretty sure I will never get tired of watching Jackman as Wolverine as long as he never gets tired of playing him. One of the best parts of The Wolverine is that Jackman is clearly not tired of playing him.

Starting sometime after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, The Wolverine finds our hero (Jackman) hiding in the woods somewhere, keeping to himself. He is haunted by nightmares of killing Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) and has sworn to never be that soldier again. One night, after a group of hunters track down and kill a bear, Wolverine finds himself in a bar about to confront them, when he stopped by a mysterious Japanese woman, Yukio (Rila Fukushima) asking Wolverine to come with her. She works for a man, Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), who wants to thank Wolverine for saving his life years ago during World War Two. In a flashback we see Wolverine, still with the bone claws, pull this man into a pit and shield him from the atomic blast in Japan. back to modern day, Wolverine goes to Japan meets with the old dying man and the dying man offers Wolverine something: freedom from the chains of immortality. Yashida believes he can transfer Wolverine's power of healing to himself and Wolverine can finally grow to be an old man and die with all of the people he loves. Wolverine declines, the old man dies, and all hell breaks loose from there. In his sleep Wolverine is injected with something that makes him vulnerable and the next day when Yashida's granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okomoto) is nearly kidnapped, Wolverine springs into action, but when he is shot, he does not recover quickly. He is not used to dealing with prolonged pain. he escapes with Mariko, but he knows they are not truly safe.

The Wolverine is an incredibly mixed bag. There are wonderful moments within the film, but the third act spins wildly out of control climaxing with a ridiculous action sequence involving a giant robot Samurai. However, when it was all done, my immediate thoughts were about how insanely violent the movie was. No, there is not a tremendous about of blood and no real gore, but is that what really makes a movie violent? Wolverine is shot repeatedly, stabbed half a dozen times in the climax and for most of this movie, he is mortal. He feels the pain, he passes out from the gun shots and we see and hear the agony of it. I love how his unusual pain is filmed because it would be this weird feeling for him. Wolverine jams his adamantium claws into dozens of people, ripping through their necks, stomachs, chests and legs. It is done with the full force of a violently angry man. At one point Wolverine is shot with over 30 arrows and he falls to the ground as these arrows stick out of him. I know superhero movies are typically action packed and are typically full of anonymous bad guys falling by the wayside, but The Wolverine feels like an R rated action movie that gets away with being PG-13 because it is a superhero movie. It is somewhat surprising to me how messed up the ratings system is. I know I am not the only person to think this, as badassdigest.com ran a whole story on this very thing. I am not a prude, nor do I much care if a movie is rated R or PG-13, but The Wolverine is a violent movie and I think it is silly that such violence, because of the lack of gore, can be put in a movie that children have easy access to.

Okay, back to the actual movie. For the first 35 to 40 minutes, The Wolverine is a bit slow. it is not boring, just slowly paced for a movie about a character who runs around fighting with such reckless abandon. However, the pacing in the front half is replaced by nonsense in the second half, so the movie comes off feeling incredibly disjointed. Jackman is as excellent as ever, sporting an incredibly ripped body, courtesy of The Rock's training program. He gets Wolverine's anger pitch perfect, but here, he has to express way more than he has in any other film because he has to express physical pain, but it cannot just be physical pain, it has to be confused physical pain. This is a man who has never had to deal with physical pain before. He always heals so quickly that it never fazed him. I always think of that awesome sequence in X2 when he gets shot in the head, falls to the ground and the bullet pops out of his head and he just stands up and gets ready to fight. It is such an iconic X-Men moment and in this film, he has to have a bullet surgically removed by a veterinarian student. it is a shocking disconnect if you have seen all of the movies featuring Wolverine. For a good majority of the film, Wolverine is wounded. It heightens the stakes in a way that has never been done for the character, but the coolest thing about it is that Wolverine does not change anything about how he reacts to bullets or arrows or anything. His attitude never wavers. He is going to do what he has to do to win.

The highlight of the movie is the bullet train sequence. I am so glad I did not watch it when the studio released it on-line. Why they would release the single best sequence from the film for free is beyond me. It is a truly dazzling action sequence. It is lightening fast, wonderfully choreographed and staged and most importantly, it is an incredibly awesome idea. The fact that it happens at roughly the midway point does make the rest of the film feel anti-climatic, but seriously, it is worth going to see this movie just for that sequence. I found myself gasping audibly a few times during it because I could not believe just how cool it was. It also features some of the best usage of Wolverine's claws. The claws look way more crisp here than they have in any of the X-Men movies and certainly better than in the first Wolverine movie. In the bullet train sequence, they really get to shine.

There is a wonky love subplot that serves only to remind us that Wolverine cannot get attached because they grow old and die and he stays living. The main villain, The Viper, is kind of stupid. She has some neat tricks, but the actress is awful and eventually she is overshadowed by the ridiculous Silver Samurai robot. I wanted more of the Yukio character. She was a total bad ass swordstress and had a truly miserable mutant power: being able to tell when people were going to die. The actress was great and I am hoping she will stick around in the X-Men movies or wherever FOX is taking this franchise. I found the story to be incredibly interesting, but I felt like the third act just kind of collapses the entire movie.

Final Grade: C+