Wolverine, The : Movie Review


James Logan (Hugh Jackman) seriously needs to cheer the hell up. Sure, he's an immortal, claw-knuckled mutant who has lost his girlfriend, the good-mutant-turned-bad Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), but at a certain point he needs to accept his lot in life and move forward. He has brooded and moped around enough, and watching him do it for yet another two hours in "The Wolverine" is enough to make a person lose interest even in his well-sculpted, usually shirtless bod. While the four "X-Men" features have been reasonably well-received, that was not the case with 2009's prequel "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," which felt like a clumsy, low-wattage cash grab in comparison. The plan with "The Wolverine," then, was to right the previous wrongs, hiring new director James Mangold (2010's "Knight and Day") and picking up with Logan chronologically after 2006's "X-Men: The Last Stand," this picture then used as a bridge leading directly into 2014's main event "X-Men: Days of Future Past." The effort is valiant in theory, but all wrong in conception, screenwriters Mark Bomback (2012's "Total Recall") and Scott Frank (2008's "Marley & Me") concocting such a lame-brained, minimally-scoped story it could almost drive a viewer to long for the distaff "Daredevil" spin-off, 2005's "Elektra," or, yes, "X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

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Author : Dustin Putman