Quite enjoyable, better than Origins

Rating: 7/10 (27 July 2014)

The Wolverine is not as good as the first two X-Men films, which were very good and great respectively. But it does improve on Last Stand and Origins by quite a fair bit, neither are as bad as they're reputed to be but had a lot of glaring shortcomings. That is not to say that The Wolverine had no shortcomings either. There is some illogical scripting, the romance is a bit forced and the extended scenes that has it bogs the film down, the ending is a bit too rushed, some scenes dragged and were a touch repetitive and the Japanese characters were very under-written and not at all interesting. What The Wolverine does do that improves on Origins and Last Stand is that it isn't anywhere near as bad as trying to incorporate too many subplots and too many characters and then develop hardly any of them. The film looks great, the special effects improved over those from Origins, it's slickly edited, it's shot cohesively and it has a beautifully dark look that gives it both a grit and audaciousness. The music is suitably dynamic and while not completely action-enhancing it at least fits. The story is not perfect, but there was a dark intensity there, some unexpected twists and turns and I didn't have too much trouble following it, while the action is smartly handled especially the Throne of Blood-like ninja fight and the one on the superfast train. The funeral one was reasonably fun too but was over too quickly. James Mangold does valiantly and unlike Brett Ratner and Gavin Hood he is actually comfortable throughout instead of being good in one aspect(the action) and not in the other. The performances are fine, although Tao Okamoto's beauty is nowhere near enough to salvage her bland acting. Rila Yukushima's acrobatics dazzle and of the femme fatales Svetlana Khodchenkova is even better, slinky and formidable. But Hugh Jackman gives the best performance, a very powerful performance while being subdued, it was nice to see some depth to him this time when in Last Stand and Origins he was moody for the sake of it seemingly and not much else. The Japanese culture was very nicely done and gave the film some diversity. To conclude, a decent and quite enjoyable film that serves as a better but still not perfect origins story. 6.5/10 Bethany Cox