Wolverine

X-Men Origins: Wolverine – 2009

*** Out of ****

The latest entry in the X-Men saga explores the back story of likely the most popular character of that universe, but Wolverine and it is a mostly jumbled exercise in duality. Wolverine tries to be tragic, but offsets the tone with camp, tries to be an ensemble piece yet an in-depth origin tale of a few centre characters and infuses a mostly horrendous script with scattered excellence.

Almost always the issue with an overexploited franchise is the formation of plotholes and logical gaps, which Wolverine churns out in spades. I know little about the Wolverine mythos but even I can pick out discrepancies from the comics and from the original X-Men trilogy, which also hinted at the mutants tortured past. However disregarding such shortcomings is always the way to proceed when viewing an effects laden summer blockbuster and to that, Wolverine is never un-entertaining. That success however is due to the well matched talents of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Liev Schreiber as his half-brother and future nemesis Sabretooth. Had the performances been in a better, more coherent film than Wolverine might have been worthy of praise, but instead I can only give a tentative ok.

The largest issue, and as you can already tell there are number, is the fragmented story that is constantly interlaced with action. By no means do I want a Hulk that is all talk no smash but Wolverine could have greatly benefited from longer action sequences followed by longer periods of downtime, not epilepsy inducing flashes back and forth. The same issue applies to the ensemble cast of mutants who all have extended cameos and take away screen time from the central characters. With spin-offs already announced the intention to all this becomes clear; to weigh the popularity of the introductions and the potential profitability of another side-story. Yet with no less than half the mutants killed off during this film, part of me remains puzzled but then again it is Fox.

The opening credits hint at what the movie could have been, segueing between wars and conflicts spanning a hundred years, Logan (Wolverine's human name for those not familiar) and Victor Creed (Sabretooth) fighting side by side as invincible brothers. I would have loved to see an entire movie of those two set in a war scenario, alas it remains only a tease as we meet up with the duo in present day where they are recruited by William Stryker (Danny Huston) to take part in a special-ops team comprised of The Blob (Kevin Durand), Bolt (Dominic Mongahan), Agent Zero (Daniel Henney), Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds in one of the best supporting roles) and John Wraith (Will i Am). But the team disperses after a conflict, which then breeds a tale of revenge which fuels the decision to undergo the eventual procedure that would make Logan into the Wolverine we all know.

The most contrived and actually fairly infuriating segments of Wolverine stem from director Gavin Hood’s choice to continuously set up sub plots with angelic characters only to have them die ten minutes later and further attribute it to Logan’s quest for revenge. It is a shameless grab at the heartstrings which is furthered muddled by the lack of any actual pain. In the original X-Men movies, when Wolverine deployed his infamous claws he would scream in pain, bleed and think twice about barring them; that is not so here as he not so much as winces when the animal is freed, so to speak. Only when Wolverine engages with the ruthless Sabretooth do we get a true sense of anguish. It may seem like I am heaping a great deal of criticism on Wolverine, and I am, but all the irreconcilable issues are counteracted by a great sense of fun, and while its easy to point a finger, its hard to suppress a smile.