Hugh Jackman has been playing Wolverine since the first X-Men movie, released in 2000. He’s always been good in the role, even when the movies have been less than stellar. (X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I’m looking at you.) But he’s never been more compelling or nailed the role like in Wolverine, the new X-Men movie focused solely on his character.
That in part can be attributed to Jackman’s skills as an actor. He has not only the right look for the role but also brings the perfect balance of intensity and vulnerability to the self-healing, never aging mutant. In Wolverine, he fights dirty politicians, Japanese mobsters, an evil mutant with reptilian powers and more, and does well – when he’s feeling himself. (He loses his powers for a while.) But, even more compelling than the action is Wolverine’s character arc.
As Wolverine opens, the title guy is still dealing with the guilt of killing Jean Grey in The Last Stand. Actress Famke Janssen is back in the role in dream sequences, and, along with some keen writing and solid directing, does a superb job of projecting Wolverine’s guilt and desire to never hurt anyone again, especially someone he loves. “I’m lonely. You PUT me here,” she says caustically while lying in bed with Wolverine at a moment when he appears to finally be breaking free of the burden he’s carried for years.
Jackman takes Wolverine through these changes in a way that drew me into the story and carried me through the movie’s slightly long running time of two hours and 16 minutes. Actors regularly replace other actors in superhero movies and other action franchises, but Jackman has dug his character’s adamantium claws into the role and hung on, to the benefit of this movie and, hopefully, next summer’s X-Men: Days of Future Past.
I mentioned the writing. Wolverine is, overall, well-written. The story has a perfectly curved dramatic arc, the dialogue is generally strong, and there’s more focus on character development than in most superhero movies. Even secondary characters like Yukio, a young woman who tracks down Wolverine in the Yukon and brings him to Tokyo, are given moments to shine.
There is one BIG problem with the writing: there are too many characters and the plot is more complex than it needed to be. Tracking the villains, their motivations and their shifting alliances can be taxing. Humorously, Yukio spends several minutes of the movie introducing Wolverine to various people once they arrive in Tokyo. It’s an effective narrative tool, but it weighs down the picture for a few minutes. Apparently, the writers were aware of this dilemma, as at the end of one set of introductions at a funeral, Wolverines scowls, “Is there anyone else you want me to meet?”
Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark are the penultimate examples for how to do bad guys in an action movie: In one, you had the Galactic Empire; in the other, Nazis. It was clean, and the enemy wanted only power. But in Wolverine, there are too many bad guys with too many different motives. It muddies the waters.
Fortunately, director James Mangold doesn’t rush through the introductions, nor does he leave us wondering what a particular scene was about. If the script is slightly bulky, his directing is focused and tight. He never lets the story get away from him, so I never felt lost in a morass of plot.
I also like how Mangold directed the character of Yukio in the action scenes. She’s highly capable with a sword and of pulling off nice moves, turning her fight scenes into deadly ballet with her opponents. Mangold shoots the fights involving other characters too closely and cuts from shot to shot too quickly for viewers to absorb what’s going on, but at least he didn’t shake his camera around and call it a day. Also, a chase atop a speeding train looks rather fake, but at least it moves fast.
Wolverine is a good comic book-based movie and easily the best film in which the title character has appeared. It ends with a tantalizing mid-credits teaser of Days of Future Past, so here’s looking forward to seeing Jackman brandishing the claws again next summer, this time without the burdens of his character’s past.
Three and a half stars out of four. Rated PG-13 for intense action, violence, sexuality and language.