|
How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 20 July 2013
This article is a review of THE WOLVERINE.
|
“I've been trying to find you for over a year. My employer's dying, he wants to thank you for saving his life. It's an honour to meet the Wolverine,” Yukio
“That's not who I am anymore,” Logan
Since the high of X-MEN 2, probably one of the best super-hero flicks of all time, containing one of the most exhilarating action sequences so far, the Hugh Jackman-centred X-Men franchise has progressively nose-dived into the doldrums of creativity. It’s not Jackman’s fault, his commitment to the beloved character is what maintains a certain anticipation for another instalment. I didn’t think a Logan episode could get worse than the previous escapade, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. I was wrong.
THE WOLVERINE actually doesn’t continue from the 1970s-set ORIGINS. We find the lead’s alter ego, Logan, as a dishevelled, hirsute wanderer in the forests of the Yukon. He is broken hearted after the death of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) in the climax of the third mutant adventure, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND. THE WOLVERINE actually opens on a memory within a dream. Logan is in a prisoner of war camp outside Nagasaki as the nuclear bomb is dropped. He manages to save a kindly Japanese guard, Yashida. How they both survive the immediate after effects of the blast, even with Logan’s accelerated regenerative healing powers, is akin to the ludicrous sequence of Indiana Jones being shielded from a similar explosion, by hiding in a fridge, in the execrable KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.
“That's not who I am anymore,” Logan
Since the high of X-MEN 2, probably one of the best super-hero flicks of all time, containing one of the most exhilarating action sequences so far, the Hugh Jackman-centred X-Men franchise has progressively nose-dived into the doldrums of creativity. It’s not Jackman’s fault, his commitment to the beloved character is what maintains a certain anticipation for another instalment. I didn’t think a Logan episode could get worse than the previous escapade, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE. I was wrong.
THE WOLVERINE actually doesn’t continue from the 1970s-set ORIGINS. We find the lead’s alter ego, Logan, as a dishevelled, hirsute wanderer in the forests of the Yukon. He is broken hearted after the death of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) in the climax of the third mutant adventure, X-MEN: THE LAST STAND. THE WOLVERINE actually opens on a memory within a dream. Logan is in a prisoner of war camp outside Nagasaki as the nuclear bomb is dropped. He manages to save a kindly Japanese guard, Yashida. How they both survive the immediate after effects of the blast, even with Logan’s accelerated regenerative healing powers, is akin to the ludicrous sequence of Indiana Jones being shielded from a similar explosion, by hiding in a fridge, in the execrable KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.
|
|
|
|
|
Seguing from the memory, to a dream where the bereft Wolverine is conversing with Jean Grey in bed, there is the allusion to existential crisis. Logan is effectively immortal, being over 100 years old, but has lost not only his purpose, perhaps also even his will to live, after the deaths of those close to him, including lover Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) and father figure/mentor Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart). It’s a theme that should’ve been a melancholic/tragic undercurrent woven into the fabric of the narrative, as Wolverine grapples with ideas of duty and his role in the wider world. However, it is barely delved into.
When there was talk of maybe director Darren Aronofsky sitting in the director’s chair for the clawed mutant’s trip to Japan, anticipation levels suddenly rose. When someone of his verve didn’t take up the reigns, and mediocre visualist James Mangold (COP LAND, KINGHT AND DAY) stepped in, expectations plateaued again. And the outcome is even worse than imagined. We have been given just one standout action sequence in a runtime of 127 minutes; the rest a cacophony of dreary set-pieces, awful 3D and fumbled characterisation. The soldier Wolverine saved, Yashida, is now an old man and dying. The latter wishes to have a final meeting. Yashida has not wasted his life, he is head of Asia’s biggest tech company. I guess with nothing better to do, after a laughable introduction of Logan avenging a CGI bear killed by some douchebag hunters, he heads to Tokyo. There, Wolverine meets wafer thin players to chafe against. The only fleshing out is provided by arrows, samurai swords, bullets and claws, rather than in any script sense. People with muddled motivations drop in and out of proceedings. There’s a denouement with an Adamantium robot, for no logical reason. Except the fight, commencing at a funeral carried out across a city and finishing atop a bullet rain, there is little to get the heart racing or the mind thinking or the heart fluttering.
Oh yeah, there are only two or three other mutants at play. Why aren’t there more fantastical, imaginative denizens? This is an X-Men film after all.
When the end credits stinger, setting up X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, arriving summer 2014, is the most exciting thing about the film you’ve just watched, is that not confirmation of sitting through a torpid experience?
|
|
