THE WOLVERINE Review

Release Date: July 26th, 2013
Director: James Mangold
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Film Pulse Score: 7/10

After the extreme disappointment of the last two films featuring Wolverine (not counting the cameo in First Class), there was little hope for James Mangold’s effort to breathe new life into the character.  Surprisingly, the impossible has happened and The Wolverine proves to be a solid entry in the X-men franchise, in addition to being infinitely superior to Logan’s last solo outing.  It’s not without its problems and it’s far from perfect, but as the marketing states, this is the film the fans wanted.

From the beginning, it’s clear that this film will carry a different tone than what we’ve seen previously.  We see Wolverine as a broken man, both physically and mentally.  A life filled with pain and loss weakens him, makes him vulnerable.  Delving more deeply into the psychology of the character gives the film more weight so it doesn’t have to rely on set piece after set piece.  

That isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of action in The Wolverine.  In fact, the action scenes in this film are far better than anything we’ve seen thus far with the character.  The fights are more brutal, more visceral, and way more violent than what we’ve seen in the past.  The amount of violence shown on screen was a surprise given the film’s PG-13 rating, however Mangold stated there would be an unrated version coming to Blu Ray that most likely contains elements that needed cut to keep the rating.

The action mainly consisted of Wolverine fighting hordes of ninja or Yakuza, and the filmmakers made the interesting choice to not cram as many mutants on screen as possible.  This was extremely refreshing and kept the plot tight and concise.  Wolvie did have to contend with Viper and the Silver Samurai, however they were only present at length in the final act.

These two enemies proved to be weak spots in the film.  Viper’s voice was clearly dubbed, which felt jarring every time she spoke, and the CG on both characters were fairly weak.  Thankfully, the amount of time spent with them is short, considering the film is two hours and six minutes long.

Having blockbuster films be over two hours long feels like a prerequisite these days, and there could have been some fat trimmed off this one.  The dream sequences featuring Famke Janssen as Jean Grey felt too numerous and unnecessary.  We already know Logan is haunted by his past, we don’t need to be constantly reminded.

The dialogue, while mostly good, felt very exposition heavy in certain instances.  It’s clear that the writers are assuming that no one knows anything about Wolverine, Japanese culture, or even the geography of where Japan is located.  I’m sure this proved useful to most people, but it bothered me to see two Japanese men in Japan talked about the shape and size of the country.

Those issues aside, The Wolverine is still a well-crafted story that stays more true to the comic book than most movie adaptations.  It’s far more grounded and emotional, and it’s easily the best representation of Wolverine we’ve seen on film.  Add in one of the best post-credit stingers ever, and The Wolverine becomes one of the biggest surprises of the year.