In the final scene of “The Wolverine” we see Hugh Jackman as
the titular character aboard an airplane, ready to get back home from Japan
with his new female companion Yukio (Rila Fukushima). As the plane takes off she asks him “where
are going now?” He reluctantly answers “Up”. “And then where?” she asks. For a moment he pauses and answers “We’ll
see”. This (probably horrible
paraphrased) exchange basically sums up exactly what this movie aspired to and
what it ultimately accomplished.
“The Wolverine” is a semi-sequel to “X-Men
Origins: Wolverine”, a semi prequel to the first three “X-Men” movies. And as
everyone should know, those movies became increasingly disappointing with each
effort released. Without Brian Singer,
the first director to adapt the Marvel comic source, “X-Men: The Last Stand”
and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” lost sight of the original vision of what this series
was trying to achieve or how Singer managed to do it with class and dignity.
They became cheaper looking, yet bloated, over-plotted, and campy in a bad way.
In Mathew Vaughn’s imperfect but commendable
2011 reboot, “X-Men: First Class”, the series began to get it’s legs back, but
with its attentions devoted to a younger X-team, Jackman’s Logan/Wolverine character was temporally
benched. So, needless to say, this
sequel, directed by James Mangold (“Girl Interrupted”, “3:10 to Yuma”, “Walk
the Line”) comes with a lot of difficult baggage.
In this
film we catch up with Wolvie after the traumatizing events of “X-Men: Last
Stand” where he was forced to kill the Dark-Phoenix-possessed Jean Grey.
Essentially surviving as a bearded hobo, living in the wilderness with shoddily
rendered CGI bears, he is eventually found and identified by a young, kitana
wielding, Japanese women named Yukio.
Her mission is to bring Logan back with her to Japan where her grandfather
Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), with whom he was briefly acquainted during WW2,
wishes to share the gift of mortality that his mutation has denied him. Logan declines
the aged man’s offer just before his timely demise.
After
Yashida’s death, a political rift then sparks a dangerous street-war between his
two granddaughters, the Yakuza, as well as a clan of black cloaked ninjas, led by
a venomous, snake-like woman, who manages to poison Wolverine, taking away his
defensive healing factor. Logan then has
to protect Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the softer and more vulnerable of Yahsida’s
progeny, as they both try and find the source of these recent attacks.
“The
Wolverine” is a refreshingly smaller movie, despite its complicated, soap-opera
plot. James Mangold, who has never been a fanboy director, brings a lot of
subtlety to this story and approaches the material without the sense that he
must eclipse or surpass its predecessors. What he provides instead is a B-movie,
eastern-inflected, detective story that just happens to exist within an X-Men
framework.
The
dialogue is simplistic and the pacing is at times too slow, but it seems quite
confident in its intentions and it gleefully treads new genre territory, while
maintaining the character’s core milieu…That is until its final showdown where
the movie quickly devolves into big robots, bad wigs and characters dangling
out of windows; a sequence so deflating that it almost makes you forget how
clever and well-choreographed that earlier train fight was.
As a
modest movie with lower ambitions it manages to meet them without spreading
itself too thin or diluting its appeal within a malaise of convoluted comic
book references. However, it also never reaches the sublime heights of the
better X-movies and it does project a begging sense of apology throughout.
Despite its structural collapse in the third act, I have tenuously decided to
accept The Wolverine’s apology. Most of the time the film is just engaging
enough and its patient tone is actually welcomed after a glut of superhero
flicks that desperately try to out-epic the ones before it.
Originally published in the Idaho State Journal/Aug- 2013
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