The Wolverine: Good if it’s Cheap

Greetings and welcome to another week’s worth of James’ Art House Film Reviews, where I only review the fanciest and finest of art pieces in the most eloquent and serious manner possible. Today, noble scholars, we shall critically analyze a new and wonderful addition to classical cinema called The Wolverine. ‘Tis a film which reaches for the hallowed halls wherein certain legendary silver screened masterpieces that I have previously reviewed now reside—films such as The Expendables 2, Grown Ups 2, Resident evil 5 (or was it 6?), The Man with the Iron Fists, and Fast and Furious 6. But, the question remain, does The Wolverine have what it takes to join these goliath’s of cinema?

If you haven’t been able to figure it out on your own by now, this is in fact a sarcastic jab at the type movies I’m often asked to review.  It’s okay though, while I am a gentleman who enjoys the finer things in life, I actually write better when my heart is filled with turgid hate and rage. Where I can write thousands of words describing how god awful the aforementioned movies are, I tend to struggle mightily coming up with interesting ways to say something positive about a movie I do enjoy.

And to be fair, I actually requested to review this movie, in part because James Mangold also directed 3:10 Yuma, which was a delightful little action movie; but also because the preview for this particular movie looked delightfully awful. In fact, I had pretty much started crafting lines making fun of this film in my head before I even made it into the theater. This is what, like the 5^th installment of the x-men franchise that includes Hugh Jackman as Wolverine? Typically as a rule of thumb franchises get worse and worse as they go on, and spin offs are the lowest medium of visual art known to man. So this being the second film in a spin off franchise must mean it’s going to stink worse than the urinals in Dodger Stadium, right?

Well, not exactly.

The Wolverine has plenty of flaws but I’m not quite ready to add it to the annals of illustrious crap I’ve reviewed just yet, I’d rather place it side by side with stuff I’ve reviewed that I didn’t quite like or dislike too passionately, like Jack Reacher.

In The Wolverine, we, for like the third time in the X-men franchise, we meet wolverine acting all depressed somewhere in Canada. Once again, higher powers in the world require his services, and he’s all like, “I’m not the wolverine anymore, blah blah blah [pouty face off into the distance].” Jesus people, can’t you understand that the Wolverine just wants to live in a hut in Canada, terrorize dumb stereotypical mean red necks, and be able to say ‘eh’ and ‘aboot’ in peace?!

This particular time, it’s a Japanese guy he saved from a nuclear blast in Hiroshima and apparently also successfully treated his nuclear radiation poisoning.

Where this movie succeeds that the previous Wolverine spin off fell short is its mysterious plot line, its resurrection of Wolverine’s patented smart ass-ery, and oh look there is actually some blood and cussing in a movie where dozens of people are savagely murdered, unlike most super hero movies.

For once, we have a super hero movie where our character doesn’t have to save the city, or world, or universe. Instead there’s just the hot chick, which seeing as how there probably weren’t a lot of cute girls for Wolverine to occupy himself with in the Yukon is at least somewhat believable.  Also, the fight scenes aren’t just showcases to see how much stuff our characters can destroy around them in CGI, and they’re enjoyable to watch for the most part. We also have ourselves a sort of coherent character arch where Wolverine kind of sort of learns something about who he is on the inside and that maybe he should just give up feigning the reluctant-ness of his whole reluctant hero schtick.

Where the movie does fall short is its laughable acting and the flat out thoughtlessness it sometimes exhibits.Of course, Hugh Jackman is a natural at the Wolverine, I’ll give him that. which is funny because when he was first reported to play the role in the original X-Men, fanboys screamed bloody murder—you see, Jackman is one of the tallest men on Broadway and the Wolverine from the comics was very nearly a midget. Also, the fabulousness of Broadway counteracted with the original character’s badassery.

But Jackman’s Broadway acting skills actually made him one of the best choices in the end, and none of that really matters anyway once you see Jackman’s body. I mean, holy crap. If I were into dudes, then Hugh Jackman is probably who I would go after. But besides Jackman, there really isn’t much to work with here. I’m almost certain the casting director looked at the rest of his budget and wondered: “should I hire old people who can act pretty well or young people who have never acted before?”

The story has a bit of wit and isn’t quite as predictable or poorly written as the action movies I’ve grown accustomed to. The blunderingly thoughtless scenes and mistakes seem to be limited to deviations from or a lack of research in the X-men/Wolverine lore already established within the Marvel comic universe, and since I take little care in ensuring such lore remains unadulterated, these things were not an issue for me.

I can’t quite say that I would pay to go see The Wolverine, but I would absolutely Netflix it or rent it for a buck out of the redbox, and sort of enjoy it. Considering I hate just about every action movie I see now days, and loathe sequels and super hero movies even more than most people, my ambivalence might mean you’d be willing to pay to see it in theaters on a bored night. And that’s all the praise I can really offer for this movie. If you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll note this is a pretty glowing and positive thing for me to say.