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The Wolverine (2013)
Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima. Directed by James Mangold.
Spoilers for previous X-Men films.
The Wolverine is the sixth film in which Hugh Jackman plays the immortal self-healing man with the adamantium skeleton and retractable knife-claws, and it still works for me. I was especially looking forward to this installment in the series when, in a post-credits scene for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Logan is seen drinking in a bar in Japan. He asks for another drink. The bartender, pouring the alcohol, asks, “Drinking to forget?” Wolverine’s answer is, “Drinking to remember.”
The plot involves a very wealthy Japanese businessman whose life Logan saved during World War II. He is on his deathbed and has summoned Logan to Japan, so that he might repay his debt. It turns out that what he really wants is to offer Logan relief from his immortality, trading it for his own mortality. Logan declines.
Then there are a bunch of weapons and fighting set against modern Japanese architecture influenced by ancient Japanese architecture, something I found visually beautiful and endlessly interesting. Logan is still dealing with the loss of Jean Grey, and he takes up with the granddaughter of the Japanese businessman. A Japanese ninja-woman with red hair is involved, as is an eastern European female doctor with the mutant ability to survive any toxin. Oh, and there’s a huge robot samurai made of adamantium.
I found most of the action sequences enjoyable on a just-watch-it-go-by basis, loving the framing and picturesque backdrops, except maybe for the climactic fight sequence, which I found long and uninteresting, ‘though there are a couple of twists I didn’t expect.
Like most Hawaii boys of Japanese ancestry, I’ve seen plenty of Japanese cinema without ever really pursuing it, and I appreciated the creative shout-outs to many of the aesthetics and schema of that tradition. I’m not sure, but there may even have been a quick tribute to the second Karate Kid movie.
Logan as the deeply self-loathing misfit among mutants seems a natural fit for these stories, and I really wish he’d stick around for a few more stories set in the Land of the Rising Sun. I found the female characters lacking in depth or interesting backstory, which was something of a disappointment, but they’re pretty to look, which really says it all about most of this film.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
72/100 (Criticker rating)
Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima. Directed by James Mangold.
Spoilers for previous X-Men films.
The Wolverine is the sixth film in which Hugh Jackman plays the immortal self-healing man with the adamantium skeleton and retractable knife-claws, and it still works for me. I was especially looking forward to this installment in the series when, in a post-credits scene for X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Logan is seen drinking in a bar in Japan. He asks for another drink. The bartender, pouring the alcohol, asks, “Drinking to forget?” Wolverine’s answer is, “Drinking to remember.”
The plot involves a very wealthy Japanese businessman whose life Logan saved during World War II. He is on his deathbed and has summoned Logan to Japan, so that he might repay his debt. It turns out that what he really wants is to offer Logan relief from his immortality, trading it for his own mortality. Logan declines.
Then there are a bunch of weapons and fighting set against modern Japanese architecture influenced by ancient Japanese architecture, something I found visually beautiful and endlessly interesting. Logan is still dealing with the loss of Jean Grey, and he takes up with the granddaughter of the Japanese businessman. A Japanese ninja-woman with red hair is involved, as is an eastern European female doctor with the mutant ability to survive any toxin. Oh, and there’s a huge robot samurai made of adamantium.
I found most of the action sequences enjoyable on a just-watch-it-go-by basis, loving the framing and picturesque backdrops, except maybe for the climactic fight sequence, which I found long and uninteresting, ‘though there are a couple of twists I didn’t expect.
Like most Hawaii boys of Japanese ancestry, I’ve seen plenty of Japanese cinema without ever really pursuing it, and I appreciated the creative shout-outs to many of the aesthetics and schema of that tradition. I’m not sure, but there may even have been a quick tribute to the second Karate Kid movie.
Logan as the deeply self-loathing misfit among mutants seems a natural fit for these stories, and I really wish he’d stick around for a few more stories set in the Land of the Rising Sun. I found the female characters lacking in depth or interesting backstory, which was something of a disappointment, but they’re pretty to look, which really says it all about most of this film.
7/10 (IMDb rating)
72/100 (Criticker rating)