MOVIE REVIEW - The Wolverine

Here comes Hugh Jackman again in another installment of The Wolverine.  Not to be confused with the 2009's Wolverine X-Man Origins that also started Jackman.

This of course has been spawned off the original comic book X-Men and the X-Men series of movies that goes back to 2000. The group of mutant humans that each posses extraordinary skills to fight the evils of the world, all the while being thought of by many as evil themselves.  Jackman stars as Logan, The Wolverine.  A man cursed with immortality.  He has been engineered to be essentially unable to be killed.  He is a now a reluctant soldier trying to find some kind of normal life, while being anything but.

Here he has been summoned by a Japanese billionaire who is dying of cancer.  The two men have a long history as Logan saved the then young man, a prison guard, from the nuclear blast at Nagasaki at the end of WWII.   Logan travels to Japan, so that the man may say an honorable thank you before dying.  But the real motive is, to steal Logan's Wolverine powers from him biologically so that he may live, and Logan may be mortal again.  Logan denies the deal but they try to destroy him anyway.  

Logan also finds that within him, even though he is reluctant, he can't help the inner voice that commands him to be a protector.  He decides to protect the young granddaughter of the dying man, as her life too is in danger as the man will leave her the global company the he owns. So there no shortage of people trying to kill Logan. Can the Wolverine survive?

This character certainly is the most interesting of the X-Men series, and Jackman is seemingly born to play it.  Lots of things have changed since 2000 and the first X-Men.   Jackman is now a huge star and you would think he might look silly playing this blade slashing hero.  But he doesn't.  In fact, his star power now is even more fuel to this fire.  He also may have a bit more say-so these days. This is a very smart script for this kind of movie. It develops strong characters along the way, and embraces its own image.  This is a piece of big fiction and it feels like it and that's fun. But it also remembers the human element and that makes it feel very real at times.

Jackman is great as our enigmatic hero, and the supporting cast is terrific.  This gets a bit long at the end as they make a terrible decision to make the ending fight scene way, way too long, where the same thing happens over and over, but it's not a killer.  Well done action sequences all along the way save the day.  A well written script and story, really push this along.

The Wolverine.  This is very good.