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‘The Wolverine’ movie review:
‘The Wolverine’ movie review:
A refreshing summer cocktail of action-movie staples, “The Wolverine” combines the bracingly adult flavor of everyone’s favorite mutant antihero — tortured, boozy X-Man Logan, a.k.a. Wolverine — with the fizzy effervescence of several mixers from the cabinet of Japanese genre cinema: noirish yakuza crime drama, samurai derring-do and ninja acrobatics. It goes down super smooth but packs a punch, erasing not only the memory of Marvel’s last foray into the Wolverine mythos, the 2009 stinker “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” but also washing away the more recent unpleasant aftertaste of this summer’s other Asian-set action thriller, “Pacific Rim.”
One might think that having superpowers or at least extraordinary abilities would make a person cheerful if not downright happy. But no, the stalwarts of the Marvel universe like Spider-Man and the Hulk are always moping around letting us know that nobody knows the trouble they've seen.
The grumbliest of these grumblers has always been Wolverine, the man with the adamantium claws. As played over and over again to great effect by Hugh Jackman, Wolverine can be counted on to be surliness personified, a man who would have us believe that the gifts of self-healing and berserker strength are a curse not a blessing.
After a brief prologue, the film opens on the titular hero (Hugh Jackman), who is now a virtually homeless alcoholic living in a squalid encampment in the woods, where he’s plagued by nightmares starring his late lady love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Fans of the “X-Men” series of movies will recall that Logan was forced to kill Jean at the end of the final chapter of the “X-Men” trilogy, 2006’s “The Last Stand.”
In short order, however, our hero is on his way to Tokyo, escorted by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a magenta-haired Harajuku girl whose powers of persuasion are enhanced by her skill with a samurai sword. A mutant with the ability to foretell people’s deaths, she’s a great character, hinting at a soul as dark as Logan’s.
Yukio has been sent to retrieve Logan on behalf of her elderly patron, Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), who is dying.Yashida, it seems, wants to say more than goodbye and thank you to his old friend.(Logan was once a World War II prisoner outside Nagasaki, Japan, where he saved Yashida’s life after the atomic bomb was dropped)
Yashida, it seems, wants to say more than goodbye and thank you to his old friend. He has summoned Logan to take advantage of his healing powers, whether the world-weary mutant is ready to relinquish them or not.
Fun, of course, is subjective.
It may be a bit of a cliche, but Yashida’s family has both violent mob connections and a long history of association with ninjas, embodied by Harada (Will Yun Lee), a bodyguard who wields a bow and arrow like Legolas. When Yashida’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) is abducted by gunmen, Logan’s nihilistic instincts are overridden by his heroic ones and he becomes the young woman’s protector and lover.
One of the film’s great set pieces is a fight between Logan and a knife-carrying Japanese thug that’s staged atop a speeding bullet train carrying Mariko. The choreography is terrific.
Trust me, it’s all a lot less complicated than it sounds.
Where “The Wolverine” delivers isn’t in plot, but in its core dynamic, which places Logan in the familiar, if somewhat paternalistic, role of savior.It’s symbolism that’s driven home by all the bullet wounds that he sustains, and which no longer instantaneously heal, leaving bloody stigmata.
The film also miscalculates in its romance between Mariko and Logan. Okamoto, a former model making her film debut, looks lovely but nothing within hailing distance of chemistry between Jackman and her is visible on-screen.
Also unsatisfying is the key plot point that has Wolverine facing a mysterious diminution of his powers. The notion of the mutant becoming more human is intriguing in theory, but in practice it turns out not to be anything we want to see. If the Wolverine can't be the Wolverine, why are we putting up with all that grumbling?
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