Sching! Slash! Kapow! Those are the sounds of Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) claw-punching his way into theaters near you. While not being the best movie released in the seemingly never ending stream of comic-book-based films, James Mangold’s The Wolverine is sure to please its audiences. Moviegoers get exactly what they came for: the nearly invincible, brooding hero that we all know and love using his adamantium-coated claws to slash his way through all kinds of enemies.
Picking up after the events in X-Men: The Last Stand, the movie opens up with a flashback of Logan as a prisoner of war during the bombing of Nagasaki in World War II. He ends up saving a Japanese soldier, Yashida, from the explosion. Back in the present, Logan is torn from his seclusion by a woman named Yukio (Rila Fukushima) who has been seeking him out for over a year. He is whisked away to Japan to see a dying Yashida once more. Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) is now a rich and powerful man, and offers Logan a chance to become mortal by suggesting that he take Logan’s regenerative abilities. Logan refuses the offer, and Yashida dies soon after their meeting.
The rest of the movie follows a basic “hero saves damsel in distress” storyline. Logan goes to great lengths to protect Yashida’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) – who is also his love interest – from Japanese gangsters, breaking his vow of not killing in the process.This would usually be a piece of cake for the unstoppable Wolverine, but the fact that his powers have been weakened by the villain Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova) makes things a little more challenging, spicing up the movie’s plot.
This being said, the locations used for this movie were excellent, perfectly encompassing each scene. From the vibrant city of Tokyo to the more rural areas of Japan, the audience always had an eyeful. The action scenes are great as well. With fights on top of Japanese bullet trains and attacks from dozens of ninjas, the audience’s thirst to see the Wolverine’s claws in action was quenched by the end of the movie. However, the actual end of the movie wasn’t all that it could have been, leaving off with no solid resolution. It’s typical of Marvel to leave its movies off with a cliffhanger, but it felt as if it needed something more. Also, don’t bother wasting the extra money to see this movie in RealD 3D unless you’re a real fan of those glasses, as there were little to no 3D effects throughout the movie.
One of the things that made this movie better was its mix of humor and action, like most other Marvel movies. These scenes add a lighthearted tone to all the intense action and drama that goes on throughout the movie, and succeed in getting laughs from the audience.
Despite its lackluster ending, “The Wolverine” is a decent superhero movie filled with surprises, action, and humor that leave audiences walking out of the theater satisfied, at the least. Don’t forget to stick around for a scene after the credits! It’s a very peculiar scene containing hints for the next X-Men movie. If you’re not sick of watching superhero movies by then, of course.
