Wolverine De-Clawed

Rating: 7/10 (2 August 2013)

Let me say up front without apology that "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" qualified as a fantastic piece of formulaic fodder. Before I saw director James Mangold's "The Wolverine," I watched "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" again and wondered how anybody could top such a tour-de-force tale. "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" boasted everything that a blockbuster movie requires: charismatic heroes, wicked villains both human and mutant, larger-than-life spectacle, tearful romance, treacherous betrayal, and histrionic revenge. During its first weekend, this Marvel mutant masterpiece coined over $85 million. Ultimately, it grossed $373 million globally. Comparatively, "The Wolverine" raked in only $55 million during its first weekend. Analysts had predicted $70 million. Not surprisingly, "The Wolverine" isn't half as entertaining as "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Although James Mangold is a gifted director, "The Wolverine" ranks well below his other epics. He directed the brilliant Johnny Cash & June Carter biopic "I Walk the Line," the complex Sylvester Stallone crime drama "Copland," the gritty western remake "3:10 to Yuma" with Russell Crowe & Christian Bale, the aggressive Tom Cruise actioneer "Knight and Day," and the critically acclaimed chick flick "Girl, Interrupted." Mangold isn't a high-profile, Oscar winning, celebrity director whose name sells tickets like Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, and James Cameron. Capable and competent, Mangold has proved to be only as good as his material. This above-average but uneven Twentieth Century Fox release suffers from undistinguished villains who make little impression and a synthetic storyline that stalls out several times during its indulgent 129-minute running time. Mangold excels when depicting the Wolverine's woes. Unfortunately, scenarists Mark Bomback of "Unstoppable" and Scott Frank of "Minority Report" have concocted a pedestrian yarn that doesn't broaden our knowledge of the protagonist. Despite its polished production values, the anti-climatic "The Wolverine" comes up short as a seminal superhero saga.
Ostensibly, Bomback and Frank adapted Marvel's limited run series "Wolverine" written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Frank Miller back in 1982. Apparently, neither Bomback nor Frank fretted about fidelity to the source material. They've changed several things, including Logan's decision to visit Japan. As it turns out, "The Wolverine" is a sequel to "X-Men: The Last Stand," not "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." The opening thirty minutes differ from the limited series comic book. First, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen of "GoldenEye") keeps invading Logan's dreams. (If you're hoping Jean Grey will play an integral role in "The Wolverine," prepare to be sorely disappointed. She appears just as suddenly as she vanishes and then keeps on annoying Logan one time too often. While the "Wolverine" limited run series mentioned Jean Grey, Scott 'Cyclops' Summers worried more about her than Logan. Second, Wolverine is camping in the woods and grieving over Jean's death when he encounters a huge bear. Later, a hunter shoots this bear with a poisonous arrow but doesn't kill it. In the comic, Wolverine plunges into the bear's den to kill it after it has slain several people. In "The Wolverine," he finds the poor bear and puts it out of its misery before heading off to confront the hunter. Third, unlike Bomback and Frank, Claremont and Miller didn't knit World War II, Nagasaki, and Wolverine's saving an enemy officer into their narrative.
"The Wolverine" unfolds on the historic day when America dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. The Japanese military maintain a prison camp across the bay from the city. The Wolverine, Logan (Hugh Jackman with his signature mutton-chops), is sweating it out in solitary confinement when the atomic bomb falls. (In "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," you saw Wolverine participate in the American Civil War, World War I, World War II in Europe, and The Vietnam War. Evidently, our hero must have volunteered for action in the Pacific as he helped vanquish the Nazis in Europe.) Anyhow, Logan saves Japanese prison camp officer, Yashida (Ken Yamamura), after his three superiors have committed ritual suicide. Miraculously, Yashida and Wolverine both survive the horrific blast. The Wolverine looks like a scorched pepperoni pizza after exposure to the blast. Our hero's regenerative powers, however, enable him to heal himself completely without a scratch. Yashida escaped certain death through the Wolverine's intervention. The prison camp officer emerges with a scar on his face as a testament to his presence at the blast.
In the film, years after Nagasaki, an elderly Yashida struggles against all hope on his death bed. He has a brilliant doctor named Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkov) who is keeping him alive. Yashida is the mastermind behind an internationally profitable electronics empire. He dispatches his daughter's friend to find the Wolverine. The agile, sword-wielding wrath, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), tracks the Wolverine down to a tavern of Canada as he is about to kill the bear hunter. Meantime, the comic followed a different path. After he settled up with the hunter in the bar, Wolverine winged his way off to Japan because his girlfriend Mariko had stopped talking to him. When he arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun, Wolverine discovered that Mariko wanted nothing to do with him. Mariko's gangster father Lord Shingen has come back into her life. Moreover, Shingen has forced her to marry another man so her father can dominate the Japanese Underworld. At this point, Wolverine found himself up to his ears in Yakuza. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Logan for the sixth time. He delivers an absorbing performance as the tortured but sympathetic X-Man. Literally, the Wolverine is the only well-rounded character in this half-baked actioneer. Meantime, the villainous Yashida emerges as a lackluster adversary who only wants to prolong his life at Logan's expense. In the long run, the beautiful but bland Viper proves to be more deceptive than destructive. In the limited run series, all the X-Men showed up for our hero's triumphant return. Mangold and his scribes make their worse mistake when they pit Logan against an army of villains that cannot hold their own in combat with our hero and his razor-sharp, adamantium claws.