Welcome, welcome one and all.First up this week, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
A couple things must be said before anything else in this review:
To the ladies who have not or do not want to see this film, I have two items of note to point out.
1) Uber-buff Hugh Jackman and his Wolverine chops.
2) Uber-buff Hugh Jackman running bare-ass naked across a field and into a barn.
Ahem. Yes. That said, if there are any women out there who still aren't going to let their boyfriends' get their action on with this film, well, you women are a disgrace to your gender. SEXIEST MAN ALIVE, LADIES, COME ON!
Now, on to the real thing.
After having a couple of days to marinate over this movie I must say, I was a bit disappointed. To some extent, the unofficial "summer begins" movie usually has both a lot going for it and a lot riding against it. On the one hand, audiences have had their fill of the award season dramas, which while usually rewarding and excellent films, we end up needing a little popcorn after "The Reader," "The Wrestler," and "Frost/Nixon." Then again, the first summer movie isn't usually the one ALL the hype is about. So, with that I will say that "Wolverine" was a good summer starter flick, but it left me wanting more. And I don't mean a sequel, I mean the plot was thinner than Calista Flockhart.
Let me clarify all of this by saying that I have never read a comic book in my life, yet I LOVE comic book movies. So, though I didn't actually know the story the cuddly Wolverine, I did actually expect to find SOME stuff out about him. Yet even after watching the movie, I have no idea who Logan (or James) is. I kind of get why his so moody, but his real origins still remain a mystery.
We find out that the father he's known all his life is not his real father, and has been killed by his real father's own hand, whom is in turn killed by James/Logan's own hand (or, bones) in a fit of rage BEFORE he learns that his father was not his father and that he just killed his father. Right. All this of course happens in roughly two minutes, and considering it seems a rather significant part of his past, way to gloss over it and rush into the war montage. Sweet. Speaking of the wars, did the army just not notice that they weren't getting older, and somehow never died, even when faced with a firing squad? And what were they going to do with them after they got shot and didn't die? And how did Stryker even FIND them? And so on, and so forth. You see the issue. Even before we get halfway through the movie it is obvious we are going to have more questions, not answers about Wolverine's past.
I did enjoy the new characters that were introduced in this film because in a way, what little of these other mutants/baddasses was touched on was in many ways more interesting than Wolverine himself. Gambit was of particular interest to me as well as Wade/Deadpool. (And yes, hearing that a spin-off is in the works for him is both awesome and sad because what plagues this film will most likely hurt Reynolds' solo outing.) Unfortunately we get precious little on these others play into the puzzle. We know what Stryker's purpose is for them, but we don't know how he came to be of such singular mindset, nor do we know how he found and recruited them, or how he managed to fool them all.
Truthfully though, the fact that the plot makes no sense and characters seem to come in and out of the film for no reason but to service the plot can actually be overlooked in some ways. This is because millions of people didn't watch this movie for a plot. We watched it for coolness and shit blowing up. And we got LOTS of both. Dukes' blowing up a tank with it's own cannon and Wade's computer enhanced samurai-sword bullet deflecting were particularly fun, especially when topped off by Reynolds' classic Van Wilder-like response "Ok...people are dead." The helicopter scene is much more satisfying than in the trailer, as we see all of what came before it. The fights between our two leading animals are also very satisfying, Schreiber's acidic wit and Jackman's unrefined ferocity play well off of each other. Danny Houston and Lynn Collins are utterly wasted due to the lack of material for them to work with. And one has to question what writer David Benioff was thinking after having penned such scripts as "The Kite Runner" and "25th Hour."
All in all, you get what you pay for with this film. A couple of good one liners, solid action, and lots of metal getting melty and twisted. Wolverine is nothing if not fun to watch, albeit mediocre fun.
