Movie Review - The Wolverine

The Wolverine *** (PG-13) For most, if not all, fans of the misunderstood, evil-fighting mutants known collectively as the X-Men (even though many of them are women), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is the favorite. So why not give him his own vehicle? We meet him in his civilian Logan persona, hiding from painful memories of his violent past in the Alaskan boonies. He’s living so deep into the woods that Sarah Palin couldn’t see his cabin from her porch. But foxy warrior Yukio (Rila Fukushima) tracks him down to bring him to Tokyo. An enemy soldier he saved in WW II during the Nagasaki bombing is dying, and wants to say goodbye.

Wellll, not quite. Over the intervening decades, the old dude became one of Japan’s richest industrialists, and actually has a rather bizarre agenda other than a final expression of gratitude. That involves the Yakuza, a hot but really creepy doctor (Svetlana Khodchenkova), and an elaborate set of pseudo-science machinations revolving around Wolverine’s invulnerability. Even better, a handful of slam-bang action sequences. The best of them starts with a funeral gone horribly awry. The downside is too much exposition and down time between those highlights. 3-D helps keep the adrenaline flowing, but the script called for a trim even more than the one our hirsute hero needed after his time doing an homage to Grizzly Adams.

Fans of the comic book and movie franchise will be quite satisfied, especially since they will better appreciate the nightmares and flashbacks that drove him into seclusion - particularly his agonizing over the loss of his beloved Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Who wouldn’t?

Compared to recent soulless epics like Pacific Rim that shot their whole wad on f/x with little regard for plot cohesion or character development, the protracted moping and talking in this one are relatively forgivable. Better to overdo the backstories than to leave us trying to care about caricatures amid the carnage. Fans should also stay put for the credits to catch the now semi-obligatory bonus scene that sets up further adventures. (7/26/13)