stealing people's money since 2009

Rating: 2/10 (9 August 2009)

X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) is exactly what the title of the movie says: an origin tale for the character of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman). It's a shame the film's so blatant, uninspiring and generic as it is because there surely were enough ingredients to make the story and the visual aspect of it in a much more compelling and intriguing way. I'm not a fan of the superhero genre or the Marvel comics and don't know much about the character of Wolverine but still there had to be more potential to the character than presented here if the character's supposedly such a pop cultural icon. The finished film is just an rush through the many meaningless and dull action scenes, throwing in ”familiar faces and characters” from the previous films like there were no tomorrow and keeping up with the tradition of poor dialog in the X-Men -movies.
Hugh Jackman is a decent actor but he doesn't have much to do in the film other than constantly keeping a menacing or troubled expression on his face and showing off his trained upper body. Liev Schreiber supports as much as a guy running on four legs with extremely long and powerful fingernails can – so not that much. Rest of the cast slumbers their way through the flick, or at least the two or three minutes they each get ”on screen time”.
The action is as mentioned above very uninspiring and something seen so many many times before: a lot of CGI and slow motion, not much imagination or creative effort. And when there isn't much in the film besides the action, you ponder what's really left; lousy dialog, dull camera-work and set design, poor acting and ridiculous story progression...
Come on movie people, put some real effort the next time you try to steal the people's money. 1/4