The Wolverine

It strays into silly, but this is nevertheless actionmovie making at its best
kat brown1-BWHugh Jackman is one of the great action heroes of our day; as convincing with his fists as when called to show character, humour and depth.

Speaking as one of the few people in Britain to have genuinely enjoyed The Wolverine’s precursor, 2009’s unwieldily titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine, I was already looking forward to this and, whatever its name, it is terrific fun.

Director James Mangold (Walk The Line) is keen to stress that this is a stand-alone film, but there are plenty of elements that will make you go ‘Eh?’, unless you have a passing acquaintance with the X-Men films or comics.

Logan (Jackman) is a mutant who ages incredibly slowly and is more or less invulnerable. Due to a nefarious plot in his past, his skeleton is bonded with indestructible adamantium, making him a one-man weapon-cum- bottle opener.

Grieving the death of his unrequited love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), Logan has fled to the wilderness. But Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a girl with a massive sword and a good line in quips, tracks him down to persuade him to go to Japan to visit a dying business tycoon, whose life Logan saved in the Second World War.

Naturally, Japan isn’t all that it seems, and Logan is soon caught up in a gang war involving the man’s delectable granddaughter, Mariko (Tao Okamoto) and his equally delectable but, quite literally, poisonous doctor (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’s Svetlana Khodchenkova).

At its best The Wolverine is a thoughtful riposte to the character-free banging and crashing of this summer’s blockbusters. Characters are rich, and at times the excellent script is laugh-out-loud funny.

It also looks terrific. Mangold has a deft line in visual gags, and while there are some complete liberties taken with basic Wolverine biology, nobody who hasn’t read the comics will care.

What stands out most of all, however, are the female characters. Both sidekicks – real and imaginary – are female.

Yukio and the ghastly doctor are wonderfully drawn, and even Mariko, cast in the romantic lead, gets fighting skills and decent lines to balance her contractual obligations to look whimsically towards the horizon.

It’s also nice to have Jean Grey back, if only as a heavenly sounding board for Logan.

After an initial hour of greatness, however, it all goes rather out of the window in the third act when it feels as though the script has been given over to a hyperactive studio executive who’s watched too many Transformers films.

The witty, wry points get scribbled out, and I imagine the instruction ‘fewer words, more fighting and COSTUMES’ can be found etched in the margin.

Khodchenkova turns up, for no reason at all, wearing a green couture catsuit, looking a bit like she’s come to a teenage boy’s Hallowe’en party dressed as Poison Ivy from Batman.

And the final fight is so utterly, blissfully ridiculous that it just needs Jackman tap-dancing to be the best thing in cinema in ages.