
 
 Comic book fans can argue over which superhero is the coolest. The noble Superman or the snarky Iron Man? The Dark Knight of despair or the red-white-and-blue Captain America? 
 
 And they will argue because, well, that's what comic-book fans do. That's part of the fun. 
 
 But in a summer which has already seen a couple of those characters come back in new adventures — and some other would-be blockbusters go bust — here's something that's hard to debate: 
 
 "The Wolverine" is the best superhero film since "The Avengers" — maybe even since "The Dark Knight." 
 
 To be honest, low expectations do help. The last "Wolverine" solo film — the 2009 how-it-began picture "Origins" — didn't thrill too many fans. And if the original franchise hadn't been losing its mutant power, the studio wouldn't have rebooted things with the recent "X-Men: First Class." 
 
 But fans of the sharp-knuckled fellow always knew that he had a lot of potential, and that one day he'd get the vehicle to show it off. And "The Wolverine" is the film that does it — and it does it by putting him in completely unfamiliar surroundings. 
 
 Set sometime after 2006's "The Last Stand," it has the Wolverine wandering the Yukon, living in the wilderness and trying to forget his guilt over Jean Grey's death. Which is kind of hard, as she keeps showing up in his dull, overlit dreams (not director James Mangold's subtlest touch). 
 
 But then an old friend from his complicated past — and immortal beings tend to have complicated pasts — asks to see him one last time. And so the Wolverine (or Logan, as he's known to his friends) goes to Japan, where there's a battle over a billion-dollar conglomerate. 
 
 Except this battle comes complete with yakuza gangs. And ninja armies. And a mad, serpentine scientist known as Viper, a literally toxic individual who speaks with a forked tongue and has plans to drain the Wolverine of his formidable power. 
 
 Yeah, just your average day in the life of an ex-X-Man. 
 
 Although Fox's "The Wolverine" is a big summer movie it's also a smart one, and other studios could take some tips. For one thing, although it's a big-budget film, it wasn't insanely expensive (it reportedly cost half of what "The Lone Ranger" did) and every dollar is on the screen. 
 
 Its crew is impressive too, and full of grown-ups. The credited screenwriters include Christopher McQuarrie (who wrote "The Usual Suspects") and Scott Frank ("Get Shorty"); director Mangold's films include "I Walk the Line." This isn't a bunch of first-timers and music-video mavens. 
 
 And — unlike, say, "After Earth" — the film both gives us something fans haven't seen before (the Wolverine dueling with samurai swordsmen? I'm there!) and a character they already have a lot invested in, facing both new challenges and some old guilty feelings. 
 
 Jackman — now in his sixth appearance as the mutant — is both physically ripped and emotionally torn up; when the film begins, this moody hero is at his lowest point ever. The actor is clearly having a great time, particularly the chance to channel some early Eastwood ("The Outlaw Josey Wales" is a definite reference point). 
 
 Jackman gets good support from the rest of the cast, too, particularly Rila Fukushima as an almost anime action-hero and Svetlana Khodchenkova as the villainous Viper. (While the X-Men series has always been known for its strong female characters, this episode is particularly woman-driven — something else other studios could learn from.) 
 
 True, after the film is over, you could pick a hole or two in the story — this is one of those movies where, instead of simply shooting a person and being done with it, the villains launch all sorts of nefarious plots. And the climax demands a pretty out-of-character twist. 
 
 But you can save those quibbles for the ride home afterward, or online debates with other comic-book fans. While you're actually watching the film, you'll be too busy enjoying amazing action sequences like a hand-to-hand combat aboard a speeding bullet train, or the rampage of a giant robo-samurai. 
 
 And delighting in a movie that triumphantly puts the "X-Men" franchise back where it belongs: On the A list. 
 
 Ratings note: The film contains violence, gore, strong language and sexual situations. 
 
 'The Wolverine' (PG-13) Fox (126 min.) 
 
 Directed by James Mangold. With Hugh Jackman. Opens tonight in New Jersey. 
 
 ★ ★ ★ ½ 
 
 ||||| Here’s the good news about Hugh Jackman’s fifth round (unless it’s the sixth) as the clawed, hirsute manimal avenger of the Marvel Comics X-Men universe: Director James Mangold’s “The Wolverine” is a whole hell of a lot better than “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” from 2009. That movie, widely dissed by comics buffs for its canonical violations and general stupidity, gets completely ignored here and absolutely is not a prerequisite. In fact, “The Wolverine” comes close to being a low-key character reboot, and along the way delivers a solid, popcorn-flavored action-adventure that should delight genre fans, as well as admirers of Jackman’s alarmingly muscled physique. While this movie lacks the ambition or the scale of “Iron Man 3” or “Man of Steel,” and probably won’t challenge their box-office supremacy either, taken on its own terms “The Wolverine” is the cleanest, least pretentious and most satisfying superhero movie of the summer. 
 
 You can definitely see “The Wolverine” even if you’re utterly unfamiliar with previous X-Men movies or comics, although I imagine hardly anyone will. (Just turn on your phone and text me during the movie if you’re confused! Kidding.) Mangold (previously the director of “Knight and Day” and “Walk the Line”) and writers Mark Bomback and Scott Frank do a nice job of supplying a few back-story clues without ever backtracking into fan-familiar material or slowing down the story’s considerable momentum. We begin with a bang, literally – the really big bang that destroyed the city of Nagasaki in 1945, when the human-animal hybrid secret weapon known as Logan (Jackman) was being held nearby in a POW camp. (Although the movie’s depiction of the Nagasaki bombing strays pretty far from reality, there really was an American POW who survived the A-bomb in conditions not unlike Logan’s.) 
 
 Logan saves the life of a young Japanese officer who has shown him mercy, and who is reluctant to commit seppuku and die alongside his comrades. That act of kindness is the fuel for the present-tense story that brings Logan back to Japan, 60-odd years later, where his old friend Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), now a technology zillionaire, is close to death. (In case you’re wondering, Logan is 200-something years old and more or less immortal so, no, unlike Yashida he doesn’t look any older.) But before we even get to that, Mangold pulls off a nifty set of nested Christopher Nolan-style dream narratives: Wolverine dreams about World War II Japan and then wakes into a dream about Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), his dead mutant lover, and then wakes again to find himself living as a mountain man in the 21st century, somewhere in Alaska or the Yukon. 
 
 Honestly, that whole first chapter, with Jackman playing Logan as a brooding, haunted figure who prefers grizzly bears to human beings, possesses such potent atmosphere that I wish the movie could have stayed in the frozen north a lot longer. Inevitably, once ass-kicking redhead ninja chick Yukio (Rila Fukushima) shows up to drag Logan off to Tokyo to visit the dying Yashida, “The Wolverine” steadily moves in a more formulaic direction. That formula, in this case, is the Asian action film, and Mangold captures its tone and energy with considerable enthusiasm. Despite a limited track record with action cinema, Mangold and cinematographer Ross Emery craft several rip-roaring set pieces, including a full-on martial arts fight sequence in a Buddhist temple and a hand-to-hand battle between Wolverine and a yakuza gangster atop a 300 mph bullet train. (That one really might be the summer’s best action scene.) What combination of weight training, chemical stimulus and digital effects accounts for Hugh Jackman’s 44-year-old body I don’t know, but as usual he does a fair amount of his own stunts. 
 
 This movie’s version of Wolverine is a fairly standard noir hero, a growly loner who seeks justice despite his disavowal of all morality, and who is torn between the dead woman he loves and the extraordinarily beautiful living one who melts in his presence – that being Yashida’s granddaughter and heir, Mariko (Tao Okamoto). But Bomback and Frank’s script gives Jackman a lot to chew on, and he pushes the Clint Eastwood impersonation behind this character into some new terrain, especially after the statuesque but evil mutant Viper (ice-blonde Russian actress Svetlana Khodchenkova) finds a way to undo Wolverine’s healing powers and render him mortal. Again, those unversed in X-Men lore won’t have heard of Viper, aka Madame Hydra – but, really, what’s to know? She’s tall, she’s beautiful, she’s evil, and she can awesomely peel off her skin, in snakelike fashion. There you have it. 
 
 I’ll have to rely on true comics fans to untangle the appearances of Viper, the Yashida clan and the rather disappointing armored warrior known as the Silver Samurai in “The Wolverine,” and to figure out how they interact with previous tellings of this story. What moviegoers will notice is a severe energy drop-off in the supposedly climactic final act of “The Wolverine” – not nearly enough to ruin the movie’s overall enjoyment, but more than enough to return us to highly generic territory. This might be Jackman’s best outing as Wolverine, but the purpose of the picture is to be a short-term placeholder and fan-pleaser, keeping the door open for another sequel without guaranteeing one, and marking time until Bryan Singer’s full-scale X-Men reunion movie is ready next summer. Oh, speaking of which: Franchise fans might just as well stick around through the closing credits, just in case there’s something to see.
– Apparently the X-Men franchise has a healing factor. The Wolverine opens today, and while it's not perfect, critics seem to agree that it's a return to form for everyone's favorite clawed mutant. Here's what people are saying. Rest easy, fans: "The Wolverine is a whole hell of a lot better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine from 2009," a train wreck that "gets completely ignored here," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon. The film follows the Asian action flick formula "with considerable enthusiasm," giving us "several rip-roaring set pieces," including a fight atop a speeding bullet train that "might be the summer's best action scene." "The Wolverine is the best superhero film since The Avengers—maybe even since The Dark Knight," gushes Stephen Whitty at the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Hugh Jackman "is clearly having a great time" and any plot qualms are powerless before the "amazing action sequences." Kyle Smith appreciates that it "turns down the volume on the usual din of colliding mutant superpowers. It takes time for some old-fashioned romance" and the action is "on a more human scale," he writes at the New York Post. But he stops well short of praising it, noting that the "serviceable" film "might be thrilling if special effects pictures came along four times a year instead of four times a month." Will Hollywood ever "grab Wolverine by the scruff of the neck and give him the stand-alone movie he deserves?" wonders Randy Myers at the San Jose Mercury News. Impossible to say, but this movie is a step in the right direction, giving him "a substantial story line, one that at least initially prefers character and narrative depth over nonstop action."