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Well lookie what we have here, a Marvel film property that dares to be something darker and more interesting than the largely paint-by-numbers affairs that so many of them have settled into lately. For much of the time, The Wolverine is actually much happier to NOT be a wall-to-wall action extravaganza that forsakes character development or interesting, smaller moments which build our rooting interests in their stakes. The Wolverine bothers to question what it’s like to be a near immortal being who cannot be hurt, but don’t worry there’s still plenty of explosions.
Taking place after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand, Wolverine has gone into hiding in the wilderness (and wouldn’t you after being a part of that movie?). After being located and tantalized with a chance to lose his mutant powers by an elderly Japanese businessman that he has past dealings with, we’re off and running into the actual story. Wolverine as surrogate parental figure to a younger girl (this is a reoccurring theme in the comic books), as wandering lone samurai, as brooding lover and existential human. And Hugh Jackman continues to play the part for all it is worth, but as roles in films like The Prestige and Les Miserables have proven that he is an actor of broader range and more depth than this role has allowed him to demonstrate previously, I really do hope he eventually hangs up the claws.
I suppose that’s the general problem with the X-Men film franchise: general fatigue about it all. Too many films overloaded with too many mutants for no real reason other than to throw in another nod to the comic books. Case in point here, Viper, leader of the group HYDRA in the comics, here a mutant who has taken the hydra/viper/snake motif to its literal extreme complete with a scene in which she sheds her skin. She offers up a few cool visuals and is very pretty, but could have been cut out and her role given to a non-mutant member of the yakuza or ninja rebels that the film is actually concerned with. And the less said about the gigantic letdown of a third action battle finale the better – it mistakes bigger for better, and the “twist” was obvious from the moment the film began to unravel it’s story.
Yet I still really enjoyed The Wolverine, and quite a bit I might add. Rila Fukushima and Tao Okamato are pleasingly tough, strong, complicated characters and both actresses give solid performances. I think Fukushima might just have made a stronger impression to me by the end of it, even if making that character a mutant with a relatively weak power was a questionable choice, she still managed to sell me on it. It also helps that both of them create a nice chemistry with Jackman and make the teacher/student relationship and the romantic one believable and worth our time and emotional investment. The film populates itself with a variety of characters that we care about and this doesn’t insult our intelligence when things must go predictably chaotic. The Wolverine is sometimes most arresting when it’s explosions are between the characters and not atop a speeding bullet train (although that scene does manage to take a familiar action trope and make it fresh and exciting).
