The Wolverine

James Mangold – 2013 – USA

Wolverine, the surly and insanely popular star of Marvel’s X-Men franchise, gets his second solo outing following 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Although I like the main X-Men films, I personally don’t love Wolverine enough to see him carry a whole feature.  In fact, I think he works much better when he plays off of the other team members, with whom he may not get along so well.  What does work, though, (and probably what is the prime motivation behind these stand-alone Wolverine films), is the fact that the affable Hugh Jackman has taken over the character so thoroughly that it’s become his signature role.  Presumably taking place sometime after X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), we find Logan a broken man, living alone in the woods, and haunted by visions of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who died in his arms in the earlier film.  He is invited by an elderly Japanese industrialist to visit him on his death bed in order to say goodbye, and he accepts because he has nothing better to do.  In the closing days of World War II, the man’s life was saved by Logan, in the process learning of his mutant ability of rapid healing.  As in pretty much any American movie set in Japan, it isn’t long before the hero is being accosted by Yakuza, Ninja and beautiful Japanese women.  It’s definitely a more cohesive and emotional story than the Origins film, which is good, but it’s also even more removed from the X-Men universe, which is bad.  Stay tuned during the end credits for a fun teaser for the next X-Men movie; Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan reprise their roles as Professor X and Magneto, respectively, and suggest that they are joining forces to fight a great threat to all mutants.  The movie is decent fun, but rather light, in my opinion, because it doesn’t add anything important as far as character or chronology goes in the X-Men world.