As strong as adamantium? Not exactly

Rating: 5/10 (18 July 2010)

This film sets out to explore Wolverine's mysterious past...and doesn't do a terribly good job of it. The story is nothing to get excited about: the first act (Wolverine working with Stryker, and then his time with Kayla Silverfox) has potential, but once he gets his adamantium skeleton, he does little more than meet some other mutants and have the occasional fight before the climax - this doesn't make for a substantial and revealing origin story.
There's very little depth to the film: you'd think that living for over a century and never growing older would have some impact on Wolverine and Sabretooth (whose portrayal is completely inconsistent with how he was in the first X-Men film) and the people they form relationships with, but this is never explored. Nor do we get much detail on the history between these two characters after all we see them go through in the opening credits. And the relationship between mutants and the rest of society - an integral part of the other three films - is barely covered at all here.
Aside from these issues, the dialogue is often silly ("You know what happens to men who go looking for blood? They find it.") and some aspects don't make much sense: for example, Stryker comments that Agent Zero never stood a chance against Wolverine because normal bullets won't hurt him - so why bother sending Agent Zero against him in the first place? The film also features a large number of mutant characters who didn't make it into the other films, and they're fairly interesting to see: unfortunately, we never get to see very much because there's just so many of them crammed in. Easily the most wasted character is Ryan Reynolds as Wade "Deadpool" Wilson: in his introductory scenes, he has some of the best lines in the film and looks to be a great character - then he disappears for a long time, and when he comes back, his mouth has been sewn shut. Great.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is still a fairly entertaining film with decent action scenes, but with very little depth and a great number of flaws, it's pretty much the definition of brainless entertainment.