Slow Pacing and Detached Hero Underwhelms

Rating: 4/10 (5 August 2013)

I already gave this movie bonus points for daring to be small and actually shoot some scenes on location in Japan. It dawned on me how the X-Men franchise went the opposite direction as the Avengers. X-Men began as an ensemble then broke the characters off (Magneto and Xavier as part of X-Men first class & the first Wolverine). Avengers introduced the main players on their own before combining them. The problem with the X-Men franchise is that the Wolverine character on it's own leaves something to be desired.
It feels like The Wolverine set out to be the antithesis of the standard super hero movie. But I think they swung the pendulum a little too far the other way. I fault the motivations of Wolverine in this smaller film. He is supposed to be always gruff and not interested in helping anyone. But he is somehow convinced to go to Japan based on a man he helped 60 years ago but never maintained contact. I think he should have been someone a bit more deeply connected to Yashida and his life was in danger, not just a visit to his deathbed.
I don't require a summer film to be non-stop action, but the pacing in this film still could use some spark. The time spent setting up the characters in Japan is too sedate. You can spark the story along by learning about these characters while taking action. I think of the pacing in the Bourne movies. Wolverine's exposure to the Yakuza threat should have been through confrontation, not exposition by his designated sidekick. The slow cooking plot is just not tautly edited to create any real momentum. The story itself lacks any real surprises, and Wolverine's tepid involvement just gave the whole movie an emotional detachment. I will credit the female lead, Tao Okamoto, as being both attractive and a credible actress. I found her somewhat a sympathetic character, but in the end, the clumsy setup didn't allow her important opening scene to transpire with the gravitas the movie wanted.
I think of the gravitas thrust upon us in the latest Bond film "Skyfall", and it all seems to come back to Wolverine's detachment with Yashida, the person he dispassionately is supposed to say goodbye to on his deathbed. We needed another scene after the exciting Nagasaki bomb sequence, where Wolverine and Yashida bond after saving his life. I was thinking perhaps Yashida taught martial arts to Wolverine and we see Logan for once have a home (playing into the whole Samurai and Master relationship). Maybe a subsequent flashback where Logan parts ways with Yashida, perhaps over a dispute that could resonate in the present day. So much more punch was possible in the storytelling. Alas, there is generic exposition, despite the attractive oriental setting.
As for the new mutants, I found the sidekick Yukio a lame mutant, but a terrific character nonetheless. Straight out of Tarantino's fun "Kill Bill Part 2" or Rodriguez's "Sin City", the innocent schoolgirl with deadly fighting skills made her by far the most interesting character in the film. Her supposed special talent is to foresee someone's future. But yet she never demonstrates that ability. The other is the actual villain of the movie, Viper. She is an intense young woman who can blow poison gas, or train insects to burrow into your heart, or something. Her evil powers were pretty lame as well. As for Yashida, the industrialist who wants immortality, that also seems half-cooked.
The third act throws in some special effects that frankly seem out of place for a film that quite deliberately made a point of NOT being that type of film. The pacing of this film should have taken more of a Bourne approach, and let Wolverine show a little more empathy for other humans, instead of wallowing in his depression of Jean Grey. Wolverine could have been like the new Bond in his motivations, and not perpetually detached.
I'd wait for the DVD.