Jackman has claws, but the movie doesn't

Rating: 6/10 (1 May 2009)

It was a lackluster and underwhelming movie year when suddenly "Wolverine" injected some life into it, a full month before anybody actually thought he would. A fan boy wet dream came true as the movie, in perfect quality, appeared on the internet absolutely free of charge leading to new debate over piracy and manic containment control by Twentieth Century Fox. A Fox columnist was fired, the FBI was brought in to investigate, an Australian visual effects company was implicated but nothing was ever proved. What a way to start off publicity for the clawed super hero, definitely the most charismatic of the "X-Men". He finally gets to show off his chops without all the extra baggage but the result is surprisingly tame and standard, both in terms of plot and action.
It's a prequel so were starting all the way back in 1845 with Logan as a young boy. After some complicated Daddy issues, he mistakenly kills his biological father and runs off with his brother Victor. Both know they're special, Logan with his claws and Victor with his sharp nails and fangs. They will grow up together, Hugh Jackman playing adult Logan, a.k.a Wolverine, and Liev Schreiber playing adult Victor, a.k.a Sabretooth, and stand side by side for every war from Civil to Vietnam, not aging a day in that time span. They are eventually recruited by William Stryker (Danny Huston), running a Special Forces team of mutants to do secret missions around the world. Victor sinks his teeth into it but Logan soon tires of the violence and splits to become a logger and takes up with a schoolteacher girlfriend. Just it isn't going to be that easy. Victor kills his girlfriend and Stryker tricks him into an experiment involving having his skeleton bonded with the metal, adamantium. Just what he doesn't know is that Stryker wants to harness his DNA afterwards and erase his memory. Logan manages to escape and sets out for revenge, finding that what happened to him is just the tip of Stryker's plans.
The execution is oddly flat. Much of the movie is based around encounters Wolverine has with characters with different special abilities. Some are very cool. I really enjoyed Deadpool, a character who can deflect bullets with his swords, and Gambit, who can manipulate kinetic energy. Sadly the screenplay by Skip Woods and David Benioff reduces these roles to brief cameos so it can shoe-horn in a lot of other unnecessary characters, campiest of all is the Blob, a Fat Bastard clone if I ever saw one. No one makes much of an impression, perhaps because their only given a few lines before being tossed into underwhelming fight sequences with a lot of aimless swinging, thrashing, clawing, hand-waving, and beating. In the entire movie there is only one action sequence that even deserves the right to be called Blockbuster and that one involves a motorcycle, some military hummers, and a helicopter. Some of the special effects are good. Wolvie showing off the claws is cool, as is Sabre-Tooths 4-legged speed but for the most part the special effects don't add much.
Jackman is perfect for this role though. In the "X-Men" movies, Wolverine has really found more of a following than any other character and all of that lays right at Hugh Jackman's feet. Wolverine fits him like a glove. He's got an awesome physique complete with rugged good looks and total grit. Another notable here is Liev Schreiber, who really finds the menace in this reckless, hot-tempered character. And Danny Huston is at his slimy best as the evil William Stryker.
Just "Wolverine" is pretty tepid and that's unfortunate. The backstory is really your average revenege flick. We don't find out a lot about what Wolverine stands for or how he got his claws in the first place. I also wondered how Wolverine ages since Jackman seems to cover 100+ years of the characters life. And what surprises me even more is that the action is a little on the lite side, being less about inspiration than about just random fights. Summer is about bringing the A-game and despite being a watchable movie with a good sense of humor and an ending that sets up the Bryan Singer X-Mens very well, it just doesn't live up to expectations, coming up short in quite a few categories.