The Wolverine

Synopsis: Badass X-man. Very bad X-men movie.

Review: Aaaahhh the X-Men franchise, making comic book nerds wet their pants with excitement since the genesis of the series back at the beginning of this millennium. The Wolverine is a continuation of the story arc focusing specifically on Logan (Hugh Jackman), a metal claw touting, ill-tempered badass who likes to mess shit up. Now, for those not familiar with the X-Men franchise it involves a whole bunch of superheroes that have special powers centred around a series of spontaneous genetic mutations. In this case Logan’s power is his ability to rapidly heal, which, coupled with the fact that he has Adamantium (a fictitious indestructible metal) fused to his skeleton as well as some pretty gnarly retractable claws, would make you think that this movie was going to kick ass right? Wrong.

Regrettably The Wolverine is by far the worst instalment in the series, delivering more disappointment than someone working at an STD clinic. The plot follows Logan as he is summoned to Japan to meet an old acquaintance, which sees him become quickly embroiled in a series of incidents involving the Yakuza, businessmen and political officials. The movie tries to get you up to speed with Logan’s tormented past however this feels so incomplete at times and leaves the plot with more holes in it than most of Wolverine’s victims. Jackman is by far the redeeming feature of this flick, which is fortunate because as the only A-list actor his performance does really allow you to stay a bit connected to the story as it meanders aimlessly onward. I must admit I thoroughly enjoyed the action scenes, many of which were uniquely shot (courtesy of director James Mangold), providing the full of sense of havoc that is a necessity when extras are being needlessly slaughtered at the hands of a man more disgruntled than a senior who just found out their concession card is expired.

Apart from the fact that Jackman looks absolutely, ridiculously awesome (yes, two adjectives required, yes, man-crush, I’m cool with it) there’s really not much else to say about this flick. I’ll begrudgingly admit that it’s a must see for all the die hard fans out there but unless you’ve got 126 minutes to kill you’re better off checking out some of the other stuff that’s on at the cinemas at the moment. Unfortunately the whole thing just seems like a random agglomeration of awful villains and terrible good guys barely held together by Jackman's on screen presence (and his guns). As a huge X-Men fan I must say that this movie seems like a lost opportunity to make something really gritty and compelling (much like Chris Nolan’s Batman series), but I guess you can’t have your Adamantium claws and cut with them too.

Score: 2/5