Dull plotting negates the movie's virtues

Rating: 4/10 (15 January 2014)

Pity poor Logan, aka The Wolverine, that immortal lycanthropic mutant with retractable adamantine claws played by that Jack-of-all-trades entertainer Hugh Jackman. All Logan wants is to be left alone to live as a hermit, spending his boundless days working as a logger, brooding over his condition and occasionally talking to the dead wife he accidentally killed who shows up occasionally to convince him to do away with himself and join her on the other side (apparently, she doesn't quite get this whole "immortality" thing).
But like Michael Corleone in "Godfather III," every time Logan thinks he's out, someone pulls him back in. In "The Wolverine," that person is a sword-wielding Japanese seer (Rila Fukushima) who convinces Logan to travel to Japan to say goodbye to the aged and dying Japanese prison guard whose life Logan saved during the bombing of Nagasaki. But things are never quite as simple as they seem in the movies, and soon Logan finds himself involved with the Yakuza, ninja warriors, the man's beautiful young granddaughter (Tao Okamoto) and some pretty messy intra-family politics.
Though it features some impressive sword fighting and some cool mano-a-mano fisticuffs atop a Japanese bullet-train, "The Wolverine" ultimately feels empty and half-hearted, a soulless exercise done in by longwinded speechifying and mediocre plotting. Better luck next installment.