For those unread in the source material, stay away...

Rating: 6/10 (11 August 2013)

Oh my, where to begin...
Okay so first I am aware that prior experience with the source material is conducive to increased enjoyment of this movie. I have only seen the X-men movies and have not read the comics, so this review will be given from a purely objective perspective of the movie.
The movie is not smart, but rather the exact opposite. You can't even try to figure out the goings-ons because they literally chuck it at you like a baseball at every plot turn. But that's expected for a 'standard' superhero action flick, right? So I won't go on about that. As for the action, I found it to be rather unfulfilling. There weren't an excessive amount of fight scenes as I had hoped, and virtually no gore other than in the scenes where it shows Wolverine's injuries. The fights were not imaginative when Wolverine was involved as he just hacked and slashed, but I have to give props for some of the Katana choreography which was very well done in my opinion. The action was not realistic, of course, but it was literally just not believable; the 'goons' with semi-automatic pistols only fired 1 bullet at close range, and just decided to stand there while they got cut down by an already slow and weakened Wolverine. With a bit more creative effort, fight choreography could easily make the fight scenes more believable.
And if you just intended to give this a look-see for the action, boy I wish you good luck when you go through all the filler 'romance' that happens in the middle and the cringe-worthy banter between Logan and the red haired bodyguard. The dialog is abhorrent. I wouldn't be at all surprised if a fanfic writer in the 11th grade spent 5 minutes writing whatever came to his mind for the dialog between Jackman and most of the other characters. It's somewhere along the lines of the awkward small talk you have when you bump into someone you're barely familiar with at the grocery store. I did not find any of the banter even somewhat humorous, minus maybe 2 parts in the whole film; it did not meet the standards of the most basic Hollywood humor. Mangold also tried to develop a romance in the middle of the movie which takes about 30 minutes to pass. It's appallingly trite, made worse by the fabricated Asian bad-English accent of Mariko.
Jackman's acting was... on point. He made it work with the script he had, and so did the other characters. The father of Mariko in my opinion delivered his lines the best - he really sounded convincing whenever he spoke. Ms. Khodchenkova on the other hand did try to give a candid performance, but to no avail due to the pedestrian dialog she was given.
The movie gets some points for cinematography and camera-work, which was done moderately well. All the shots were clear, well paced, and presented the action well especially during faster scenes such as the katana fights.
Overall, I did not have a good experience with this movie. I did not enjoy it, but my father and my little sister apparently did. You may or may not enjoy the action, but just keep in mind that there is not enough to overshadow the unbearable altercations and silly plot directions that take up more than half of the screen time.