Dir. James Mangold
126 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Watch Trailer
Typically it's around the time a franchise heads to Japan that it's really reached the end of its creative rope. Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, You Never Live Twice (the Bond film that first went into full on "Austin Powers" camp), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III, Bad News Bears goes to Japan...the list goes on and on. It's a quick way to instantly make a sequel more "exotic" and lazily make the protagonist(s) feel out of their element. With the simply titled The Wolverine, from Walk the Line director James Mangold, we see our favorite clawed hero lost and brooding in the 'Land of the Rising Sun' in Hugh Jackman's sixth on-screen portrayal of the character.
The story, taken from a famous four-issue mini-series from 1982 by Chris Claremont and Frank Miller, shows Logan after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand - a now heavily bearded mountain-man, still traumatized by the death of Jean Grey by his own hand. After beating up a guy in a bar that messed with his favorite bear, he's invited to Japan by a woman with an oddly shaped head, Yukio, on behalf of a dying Yashida, whose life Logan saved in WWII (as we see in an impressive first scene). There he gets sucked into a family feud, and has to battle Yakuza and samurais - all while his healing powers aren't working due to the likes of Poison Ivy's lost sister, Viper. Sounds like a solid enough stage for a superhero movie, but the thing just dragged on and on with some of the worst acting and most desperate attempts at comic relief I've ever seen in a picture like this.
Every actor, besides Hugh Jackman, is terrible in this movie. Not to their own fault - I'm guessing most of the Japanese actors had very limited experiences with the English language (except for the side villain, Viper - that white girl just sucked). With a film like this, that isn't as action-oriented as most summer blockbusters go, you need to be able to lose yourself and feel for the characters' struggle. That's difficult when everything that comes out of their mouths is unclear. Maybe it was just because I was tired when I saw it, but I got lost during the course of the film as to who everybody exactly was in this convoluted family battle. The entire film is a somber, slow-paced drag broken up by god-awful jokes (Yukio mentions at least 3 times that she is Logan's "bodyguard" to make it clear that she is a badass. The line didn't land the first time, it didn't the second or the third. And Logan gets washed by two old ladies. Hilarious.)
But among the bland, dull characters and boring story, there were some impressive action scenes. The one that I'm sure everyone will be talking about is the bullet train sequence (as seen in the trailer), which was one of the best pieces of action this summer had to offer. We've seen dozens of fights on top of trains before (we just saw one in the terrible Lone Ranger), but everything changes when that train's going 300 mph. The physics of it and the way things happen so fast was exhilarating. Then there were some straight-out-of-a-comic beautiful images, like the visual of Wolverine being bombarded with ninja arrows or Yukio jumping around with her samurai sword. But the majority of the film was spent with some bad Japanese actor talking about honoring their family.
A lot of critics are digging this one, often saying it's far and above better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine and it's refreshing to have a more character-driven film than the other action fare this summer (Man of Steel is almost always referenced). To me, different doesn't necessarily equate with better. I will agree the overall stupidity of X-Men Origins is gone, but the fun is completely stripped away. I haven't wanted to leave a theater more since The Tree of Life. Maybe comic nerds familiar with the source material will get more out of it, but I just wanted to claw my eyes out.
Rating: D
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