Origins and Weapon X condensed

Rating: 7/10 (5 June 2009)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is over 100 minutes of hit and miss. At times you are really at awe with the movie and how well acted it is. At other times it is cringe-worthy. End verdict definitely a lot more of the good than the bad.
I would have wanted something that is based a lot more on the either Origins or Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X. This movie however takes a bit of both, mixes it up and some random flavours. We get to know the life of James Howlett aka Logan aka Wolverine and his relationship with William Stryker and Victor Creed aka Sabretooth.
As far as acting is concerned Liev Schrieber is a different class of actor and steals the role, making all accusations of him not being big enough or not blonde enough seem stupid. Fortunately they connected everything that was wrong with Sabretooth in X-Men 1. This is the sadistic, murderous and immoral Creed we know from the comics. And lack of goldielocks won't change that.
Hugh Jackman is Wolverine apart from the fact, that the famous one-liner "I'm the best at what I do..." fell really flat. Apart from that he did a bang up job at getting in touch with the animal as well as the human within Logan.
I must also commend Danny Huston as William Stryker and I actually preferred this version of the character, than the one in X-Men 2.
Other characters are done OK, apart from surprisingly flat selling of jokes by Ryan Reynolds and Taylor Kitsch's accent being all over the place.
My major irks concern: a) The totally useless introduction of Gambit. Yes, the fight was cool. Yes, the character was cool. But you could feel how forced the inclusion of the character was. b) The whole boxing scene with the Blob was badly done and the comic relief just felt corny. c) Some of the plot points, like Silverfox faking her death just weren't dealt with right.
I would have also liked more 'bonding' between the team at the beginning of the movie.
In the end a great movie, much better than X1 and X3, but you leave the cinema knowing that if they had basically copied i.e. Weapon X the movie could have been so much more.