Rating of
3/4
The cat's comeback.
memento_mori - wrote on 07/28/13
Please note that X-Men, X-Men First Class and the Wolverine were the only X-Men movies I had seen at the time of writing this review.
So far this year, The Wolverine is the second summer movie that I could really appreciate, because it is self-aware and at the same time exceeds expectations.
James Mangold is quite a good director. I like his style, it has lots of close-ups and good framing. And visually, The Wolverine is great.
Hugh Jackman really brought the Wolverine character to life. Rarely do I say that, but he actually felt like a superhuman who didn't feel super. At all. in fact, he is quite haunting and troubled, and I loved what the movie chose to show and make of his character.
The image and flair of Japan is captured boldly and significantly well. Not since The Last Samurai has a movie explored the themes of pride, honor and disgrace of a Samurai this deeply. The Japanese characters are well-fleshed out and believable. I liked the conflict between family and mutation in this case.
What also impressed me was the action. At many times in the movie did I say: Wow, this is actually really well-choreographed and realistic action. It was simply very well spanned across the movie and never felt like: Yes, now we have to put an action scene here so that the audience doesn't get bored. It took its time and paid off with a very good final battle.
And for a PG-13 comic book movie, I was surprised with how much action they got away with. It was quite violent, but not cringing or gross violence.
Where I thought the movie could have been more clear is that Wolverine gets poisoned (it's not a spoiler, it's in the trailer). It is shown briefly, but we are left with the after-effects and it is only loosely mentioned later that he was definitely and not possibly poisoned.
I also thought the character of the Viper woman was very (VERY) clichéd and weak. They kind if descended into standard action movie villain there.
But, in general I thought The Wolverine was a very good comeback for the titular character. It was self-aware, but also had aspects that were nice to see in a comic book movie, was pleasing to the eyes and was a good time at its core.
