Pass the Popcorn review

Rating: 6/10 (26 August 2013)

After the disappointing X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), Hugh Jackman is back on the big screen reprising his famous Wolverine role. 'The Wolverine' was initially meant to be directed by Darren Aronofsky - he even re-wrote the screenplay and aimed for a R-rating. However, after his departure, we got James Mangold's PG-13 version of 'The Wolverine'. Which is really a shame, since a movie like this truly deserves a R-rating. 'The Wolverine' surely is better than the aforementioned movies, but that isn't saying much. The movie is still underwhelming and full of flaws, the PG-13 rating being one of them.
'The Wolverine' continues where X-Men: The Last Stand ended. Logan aka Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), who now looks like Jesus, feels guilty about killing Jean Grey aka Phoenix (Famke Janssen). He aimlessly lives his life and often has visions of Jean. One day he meets Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a somewhat strange Japanese girl who invites him to Japan to visit his old friend Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) because he is dying. There, because of some Sci-Fi mumbo jumbo, Logan is deprived of his superpowers. Weakened like that, he is forced to fight yakuza, samurai, ninjas and other Japanese stuff, while seeking a way to regain his superpowers and trying to solve the mystery surrounding the Yashida family.
Due to the 2 hours length and poor editing, 'The Wolverine' is a quite boring movie. It is shot in intervals: first, there are pretty long intervals where nothing significant happens, and then this are compensated with intervals of too long action scenes. This kind of editing made the movie feel tiresome. Furthermore, 'The Wolverine' has a serious villain problem. There are just too many of them, and the majority are left completely undeveloped. The screenwriters should have left one or two of them out of the movie, and focus more on the rest. Also, the love story between Logan and Yashida's daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) was completely uncalled for and made little sense in the movie's story. Logan had much more chemistry with Yukio than with Mariko and she should have been Logan's new love interest, in case he absolutely needed one. Besides, establishing Logan's guilt because of the murder of his love, Jean, is useless if during the course of the movie he bones the first sexy Asian chick he meets. And of course, like I said before, in the world of samurai, katanas and wolverine claws, a R-rating and some Tarantino-esque violence is a must.
Still, all of this doesn't mean that 'The Wolverine' is an absolute failure. I liked how the movie has a more serious, darker tone, than the Origins movie. The mystery regarding the Yashida family was also plausible (in spite of some obvious twists) and some jokes in the movie weren't as bad as one might expect. I particularly enjoyed the first act of the movie, before it went dull. 'The Wolverine' surely isn't disastrous, it has its good moments from time to time. I think it will satisfy the majority of its audience, especially the ones who were utterly disappointed with the Origins movie. Actually, it was quite nice to see Logan have some limitations and still fight his enemies. it would have been even nicer if his enemies were somewhat better written.
Rating: 6/10