I really feel for The Wolverine, aka Logan (Hugh Jackman). The poor guy can’t die, doesn’t have any cool people to hang out with, and he’s suffering from major depression…
On top of that, he’s still in love with his ex girlfriend (Famke Janssen. Even though he killed her, their relationship seems to be going well. Of course, Logan can only see her in his dreams.
No wonder our century year old mutant has the blues.
However, we don’t know all of that quite yet.
When ‘The Wolverine’ directed by James Mangold opens, Logan is having a flashback…It’s 1944 and he’s in Nagasaki, just as the atomic bomb is dropped. It’s here that Logan saves the life of a Japanese soldier, who promises to repay him one day.
Flash forward to the present…Where Logan is hiding out in the wilds of the Yukon and it’s obvious that our angry, unhappy, super hero, hasn’t been intimate with a bar of soap for a long time.
After getting into a bar fight, (3 guesses who won) Logan is approached by Yukio (Rita Fukushima) a mysterious Japanese girl…(aren’t they all) with a message from the soldier. He doesn’t have long to live and wants to finally repay Logan.
At first Logan declines the offer…He’s not too big on flying, even if it is in a private plane…but it’s hard to resist a beautiful girl with flaming red hair, who also happening to have killer fighting skills. So off they go…
Once in Tokyo, Logan visits the soldier, (Hal Yamanouchi) who’s now very old and very, very wealthy. It doesn’t take long for him to discover just how the dying man wants to repay him.
It also doesn’t take too long for Logan to find himself on the run with a beautiful heiress, (Tao Okamoto) using his claws to fight Samurai swords, Yakuza guns, black clad Ninjas’ arrows and finally, one very large, very dangerous metal robot.
And if that’s not bad enough, Logan’s encounter with Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova) a female mutant with a very long tongue, leaves him…mortal…That’s right folks…Our guy can bleed… and does a lot.
‘The Wolverine’ written by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank is filled with lots of action, stunts, fight scenes, hand to claw combat, great chases, a super fast train ride and even a couple of love scenes.
The film shot in 3D is a mixture of tones…It’s part Samurai, part super-hero, part crime drama, with lots of father/daughter/illegitimate son conflict thrown in. Is that a good thing?
Well yes and no. It is a bit of a hodgepodge, but in the end, I did find it entertaining…For that reason, I gave ‘The Wolverine’ which opens in theatres, Friday July 26, 2013, 3 bagels out of 5.
Check out our video for John’s bagel rating and for more of our thoughts about this film.
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