Wolverine
a movie review by Heather Craig
Oh dear. I just don’t know what to say about Wolverine. Is the movie entertaining? Sure. I was never bored. Is it a great movie? Never in a million years, and I’m saying that as someone who owns the first two X-Men movies (not that mess of a third). Is the movie silly? Definitely. At times it is so ludicrous that I was stunned that the moviemakers went there. The person with whom I saw the movie analyzed, “It was fine” and those are the best words I can think of to describe this one.
Superhero origin stories can be fascinating, with their mix of tragedy (yes, they are always tragic) discovering unusual abilities, and action sequences. We already know and love Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) as the main character from the three X-Men movies so doing his origin story must have seemed like a no-brainer. However, we already know so much about Logan that at times this movie seemed like pointless backtracking.
We first meet Logan as a sick child in the Canadian Northwest Territories of 1845. Only moments after his introduction, in a fit of grief-stricken rage he kills the man who murdered his stepfather -his own father! The killing was accomplished by young Logan’s sudden discovery of knife-sharp claws which can distend from between his fingers and then retract. Frightened by what he is, young Logan, evidently never ill a day in his life henceforth, runs away in the company of his older brother Victor Creed, who those familiar with such things know will eventually become the supervillain Sabertooth. It bothered me that the movie opens with Logan being what is intimated to be a sick child, and then immediately he becomes so strong that he and his brother can elude capture. Oh, well. What is one more inconsistency among friends?
The brothers, who age to those of the actors playing them and then stop, are very good at fighting and put this skill to good use, seeing intense combat in the Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. Evidently they vacationed during The Spanish-American War and the Korean War, which is unfortunate, as it would have been fun to see Logan charging up San Juan Hill. All the while Victor becomes more and more vicious, enjoying the killing of civilians, and Logan expends a lot of effort trying to control him. After one such incident in Vietnam, the brothers are sentenced to be executed by firing squad. Their survival of the execution brings them to the attention of Colonel William Stryker who has been collecting men with special abilities for an elite force which he uses for his own purposes.
From here, we learn why Logan adopts the name Wolverine, the history of his romance with the interestingly named Kayla Silverfox, and what drives him to volunteer for the excruciating procedure of having adamantium fused to his skeleton, making him invincible. If you remember much of the X-Men movies and the amnesiac Logan painfully trying to recover his memories, there aren’t a lot of surprises here. We have seen spotty flashbacks of his panicked naked flight from the secret military medical facility, so we know he will get away.
My biggest problem with this movie was the acting. Or maybe it was the casting. Why on earth was Liev Schrieber (Defiance, The Manchurian Candidate, writer/director of Everything is Illuminated) offered the role of Victor, and why did he take it? I have heard that playing the villain can be very freeing, but he manages to look rather silly most of the time. Danny Huston, who plays Stryker, bears no physical resemblance to Brian Cox (who plays Stryker in the other X-Men movies), nor does he begin to have the gravitas nor presence of Cox. He needed to be far more formidable than he was. Lynn Collins is very pretty but was also pretty bland for capturing our tortured hero’s heart.
However, the one actor I can give kudos without reservation is Hugh Jackman himself. Few men can carry off those sideburns, let alone look good in them, but he does. Few men wouldn’t look ludicrous running naked through a cornfield and into a barn, but he doesn’t. Fewer men would throw themselves 100% into a role in this particular film but he does. We believe that he is tortured. We believe that he is noble. We believe that he is in love. The only reason this movie works at all is not a special effects budget that could run some small countries but Jackman himself. He sells sells sells and we buy it. He imbues Logan with attitude, swagger, and a huge helping of pain lurking just under the surface. And he looks very cool riding a motorcycle out of an explosion or walking away from a raging fire without a single singed hair. Jackman can walk away from this one with his head held high.
As for the viewer, if you are looking for a fun, entertaining movie that isn’t particularly special or memorable, this one will work for you as well as any other.
