A Japanese movie, for all intents and purposes, with English dialogue

Rating: Null/10 (2 August 2013)

After a very brief, inconsequential prologue somewhere in the cold North American mountains, the scene moves to Tokyo, then Nagasaki. Except for our protagonist and one villain (I'll come to her later), the entire cast is Japanese. The movie will work just as well had the two Caucasian characters also been Japanese. This is NOT saying it is not a good Wolverine movie – how can it not be, with Hugh Jackman rejuvenated from Jean Valjean? I'm just saying that this is an adventure action template that can be fit into any exotic culture anywhere in Asia, the Southern Hemisphere, or even Europe.
Not to be confused with the two PRE-quels ("X-men origins: Wolverine" in 2009 and "X-men: first class" in 2011), this one can be considered remotely as "X-men 4", as it picks up where "X-men 3: the last stand" (2006) left off. In this one, however, Logan is the only one you see (not counting cameos of Jean Grey in his dreams). Since the last one was 7 years ago, perhaps a quick reminder is not out-of-place. Jean Grey who died in "X-men 2" resurrected with a Jekyll-Hyde personality in "X-men 3", only to be killed by Logan in order to save the world, at her own imploring.
In the aforementioned prologue, we saw Logan tormented by two dreams, one of which is Jean Grey. The other is used as a flashback - 1945 Nagasaki. Ageless, immortal Logan who happened to be in a prisoner camp (don't ask why – I have no idea how any WWII prison camp could hold him) saved Japanese soldier Yashida's life when the bomb was dropped. Back to the present: forever agonizing over the loss of Jean Grey, Logan apparently severed any link with the X-men community, becoming an angry lost soul seeking solace in alcohol but with the fire for justice still occasionally burning.
The story really begins when he received an invitation from Yashida, delivered by a cute pop-star-ish but deadly Ninja-type Yukio, private-jet-readied. In Tokyo, he finds an aged Yashida on death-bed, but also the head of a mega corporation with cutting-edge research facilities. He offers Logan relief from the curse of immortality ("grow old and die" from "Logan's run" seems an appropriate quote to cite here) by transferring it to himself. Sound so altruistic, doesn't it? The rest of the plot, even though a tad complicated at times, is all but predictable.
There is a pageantry of characters, somewhere in the twilight zone between interesting and banal. Yashida's son Shingen is all stereotype – ambitious, ruthless. Ditto (stereotype, that is) granddaughter Mariko (i.e. Shingen's daughter) with the standard role of damsel in distress cum hero's love interest. Aforementioned Yukio, by the way, is a girl picked up by the family from the garbage (quite literally as they found her, at age 4, searching for food in a garbage dump) who has since developed a sisterly bond with Mariko. A little shadier is a character named Harada (think of him as the Japanese version of Hawkeye), Mariko's ex-boyfriend ("ex" because of family objection, her family obviously) who is always lurking somewhere in the background. Then there is the aforementioned only other Caucasian character: voluptuous Viper, a brilliant scientist in the organization, as well as mutant possessing a reptilian tongue and a kiss-of-death.
"The Wolverine" is a well-rounded good action movie. Predictability notwithstanding, the plot serves well in anchoring the action which is competently crafted. With the proliferation of fully-developed CGI action movies today, it is not easy to impress. Yet, this movie comes up with one sequence that does impress: an elaborated melee that takes place on top of a bullet train (about the mid-point of the movie).