Short Round: The Wolverine (2013) ***/*****
The first time they tried to spin Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine character off of the X-Men franchise and into his own solo film, the result was director Gavin Hood’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a movie that didn’t have the gumption to even drop the X-Men name from the title, let alone drop the multitude of characters that come with an X-Men story in order to fully focus on the Wolverine character. Also, it was an objectively terrible film. This second try at a Wolverine solo film, from director James Mangold, is simply titled The Wolverine, and it works much better as a focus on the title character than that first go-around did. It’s also a much better movie overall.
The basic story here is that, following the tragic developments of the abysmal X-Men: The Last Stand, Wolverine has taken to the north woods, where he spends most of his time growing his hair out, hanging out with a charming grizzly bear, and waking suddenly from nightmares involving his deceased and unrequited love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). An opportunity to clean up and rejoin the world soon comes calling in the form of a dangerous young errand runner named Yukio (Rila Fukushima) who represents a powerful figure (Hal Yamanouchi) from Logan’s past, however. One plane ride to Tokyo and one haircut later, and the Wolverine is ready to fall for another dishy dame (Tao Okamato), get caught up in another battle (involving a dangerous chemist, a clan of deadly ninjas, and a crew of Yakuza hoods), and eventually reclaim his unmistakable Wolverineiness.
In Mangold’s hands, The Wolverine works as a focused character study that occasionally takes a break away from its small moments in order to break out into a flurry of violence. It takes its time to set up its story, tells one that’s fairly contained, and in a climate where most summertime movies seem to be in an arms race to see who can be bigger and louder, it generally plays as a breath of fresh air. Its opening act does a great job of re-establishing Wolverine as the ultimate badass, the middle section does a good job of giving him attachments and motivations beyond the X-Men universe, and there’s even some pleasant-to-look-at camera work that brings it all to life. But, in the third act of the film, everything that was established kind of gets thrown out the window in order to usher in a big, schmaltzy, tone deaf superhero battle. It involves ridiculous hero outfits, giant stupid robots, and mysteries that get stretched out too long and pay off in the least satisfying way possible. In the end, The Wolverine doesn’t get completely sunk, and it even works well enough to pull the X-Men franchise out of the slump it’s been in, but it also doesn’t prove to be the promising new take on a familiar face that it seemed like it could have been during its first half.
