Wolverine(Hugh Jackman) begins with a brief glimpse at Logan's childhood, where we are introduced to his step brother Victor(Liev Schreiber, all teeth and fangs), who would grow up to begin the feral, murderous Sabretooth. After a brutal encounter between the two boys and their parents, the two set off on their own. What follows is an amazing title sequence as we follow the two undying brothers through history. The two are Canadian, but they seem to be fighting on the American side of all the major wars throughout history. This lets us know that both are roughly 150 years old, and seem to have stopped aging altogether at adulthood. Throughout this, Victor becomes more and more violent, taking out his bloody urges on even the innocent. The two actually end up on the wrong end of a firing squad, but much like Chev Chelios from Crank fame: "They were dead, but they got better."
Victor and Logan are recruited by William Stryker(Danny Huston, formerly played by Brian Cox in X-2) to join his black ops squad of mutants. And for about five minutes we see each of the team members(The Blob, Wraith, Deadpool, Agent X) show off their powers in impressive fashion against nameless, faceless soldiers. The team is violent and ruthless, which suits Victor just fine. Logan, on the other hand, storms off in a huff and abandons them. We never see Logan do anything, which makes me wonder why Stryker wants him back so badly. But you know how these things work. You can't just walk away, and so Stryker sends Victor to find and track Logan down in order to bring him back. Logan has since settled down with the love of his life, a woman known as SilverFox, and has joined the cast of Ax Men. He's a lumberjack, folks. That is until his brother comes calling, and destroys the peaceful life that Logan had created for himself. Now Logan is out for revenge not only against Stryker, but the only family he has left.
I'm convinced that if this were about some unknown hero, I'd have walked out of this thing. If it weren't about these amazing Marvel Universe characters that I love, this would be on my sh*t list right there alongside X-men: The Last Stand. Everything from the script to the direction falls flat. The writing in particular does Hugh Jackman no favors. Wolverine is never really given a personality to speak of. He lacks the laconic wit that he is so famous for. The surly attitude. The air of mystery. There's none of that brought to us here. Wolverine isn't the least bit interesting, nor is his quest for vengeance.
And some request for vengeance it is. You really feel the crushing weight of the PG-13 rating here, as Wolverine is essentially neutered from any real acts of violence. Victor, arguably the most violent mutant in comics, has two real noteworthy kills. One of those is bloodless. The other is off-camera and we only see the results. The violence fighting is clean and somewhat cartoonish, like when you'd watch GI Joe and wonder how nobody died in that massive explosion. The action sequences are all staged rather boringly, and the special effects simply leave a lot to be desired. All one has to do is look at how cheesy Wolvie's CGI claws look when he's checkin' himself out in the mirror. It's laughable.
Speaking of laughs, let's talk about what they did to my boy Deadpool. A few weeks ago I expressed my disgust at their plans for Merc-with-a-Mouth. The choice of Ryan Reynolds to play him was spot on, and the idea for a spin off seemed a no brainer. Reynolds plays Wade true to form in his one true scene in the movie. Reynolds channels Wade's witty banter coinciding with his incomparable knack for killing. But then, just as previously reported, Deadpool disappears from the film entirely. He re-emerges later, but the man they're calling Deadpool bears no resemblance to him whatsoever. To be honest, this film does a lot of tweaking with the characters, and none of it for the better. Would it have been so hard to leave well enough alone? The only character who remains relatively untouched is Gambit(Taylor Kitsch). The smooth talkin' Cajun makes an impressive showing and is the only character treated well enough to possibly warrant a sequel.
What bugs me the most is that the most interesting aspect of Wolverine's life was widdled down to approximately two minutes. I expected, no hoped, that what we would be treated to was a trip through Wolverine's life throughout history. Instead we got a fairly standard revenge story. Not a lot of action. Not a lot of anything really. This doesn't feel the least bit like it deserves to be a franchise, but more like a one-off film that should be quickly forgotten. Remember Elektra? The Spirit? Daredevil? Put this one right next to those in the panethon of popular characters with franchise killing solo debuts.
5/10
