The shower-destroying plumber strikes again!
(goddamn, did I really remember that joke from 3 years ago?)
So, yeah, another movie about Wolverine. Sure, only the second one with his name in the title, but we can all agree that every X-Men film save for First Class (my favourite, unsurprisingly) has been about the rapid-healing serial-killing hairy butthole, can't we? And, yeah, his push to the front has made him the most bankable element of the series produced by Fox, but at this point, what more is there to say about Logan? How many more trials can we force Hugh Jackman to go through? Exactly how much more silly can we make his haircut?
That plus some generally uninspiring trailers and posters (like the shouty business above) made this probably the least-exciting genre flick of the summer for me. I mean, it didn't look offensively bad the way The Lone Ranger did (haven't seen it and don't intend to, before you ask) but at least that trainwreck seemed memorable. Iron Man 3 had the Mandarin and the 'Iron Legion', Man of Steel had the rebooted scent of newness and promises of crazy bastard action, Pacific Rim had goddamn giant robots and goddamn giant monsters, Fast Six had whatever Fast Five had but also with a tank...what did The Wolverine bring to the table besides the same bloodless claw stabbing we'd been seeing for years?
Let's have a look under the skin, before it heals again.
Let's have a look under the skin, before it heals again.
Yeah, know the feeling, man.
The gambling minigames in Yakuza 4 felt like a waste of time, too.
The Plot: Nagasaki, 1945. The second nuclear bomb drops while the man called Logan (Hugh Jackman) is imprisoned by the Japanese army. Shielding a soldier named Yashida from the blast with his toughened body, Logan finds himself carrying a life-debt that he'd come to forget about in time...until, many years later, a young mutant envoy named Yukio (Rila Fukushima) tracks him down with an invitation. Yashida is now an old man (Hal Yamanouchi) and chief of a massive corporation, but he remembers his debts and wants to do right by Logan - by removing the healing powers that have kept Logan immortal for all this time and finally letting him die in peace. Logan politely refuses, however.
Shortly thereafter, Yashida dies, and while attending his funeral, Logan is dragged into a kidnap attempt against the man's granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) and finds to his shock that his healing powers are failing. No longer invincible and tangled in a web of family politicking he can't begin to grasp, Logan does the only thing he knows how to do, pick fights with anyone who looks evil...
PAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!
The Good: The decision to set the film 95% in Japan pays off in a big way visually. I think the first 3 X-films got free passes back in the day because they rode the coattails of The Matrix and so audiences kinda immediately went 'oooh' at anything cod-futuristic where the cast wore black leather; nowadays they just look so dull, and it's good to see that the artistic shake-up of First Class has carried on to let each new filmmaking team go with their own ideas more boldly. From bustling city streets to snowladen fishing villages, it's a gorgeous world that feels new and mysterious and alive in a way that almost forces you to care about the people there by proxy. Director of photography Ross Emery, take a bow, sir.
However much I might loathe the title character (admittedly more for comics reasons than movie ones but still), I will fairly admit that this is a return to form for Jackman in the role after the confused X3 and the bloody dreadful Wolverine Origins. The Wolverine sees Logan at his most feral and brutal to date (and realistically about as violent as he can possibly be in a non-R-rated movie) but also allows for the wry, seen-it-all humour that endeared the character to audiences in the first 2 movies, and pays lip service to the price paid in soul for living as an indestructible weapon for decades. Jackman's a properly great actor and he seems energised by the demands the script puts on him, and rises to the occasion wonderfully.
Thankfully, if like me you were born with a predestined hatred for short, hairy Canadian clawed invincible bastards, the supporting cast is also pretty great. Fukushima and Okamoto were both chosen from modelling backgrounds, but you'd never know by their performances as they hold their own against some much more experienced performers. Fukushima in particular is a delight as a flame-haired impetuous alt ninja girl, and it's to her credit she actually manages to convince as a fully-formed character despite being presented as basically a mishmash of every single stereotypical otaku fetish ever. Hiroyuki Sanada, a veteran of Japanese cinema who's now become one of Hollywood's always-on-call guys whenever an older Asian man is needed, brings intensity and gravitas to the role of cutthroat businessman Shingen such that it's still shocking he's not really the main player (minor spoiler, I know, but not really...) and his duel with Logan is refreshingly free of digital gimmicks and dramatic as all hell. And Will Yun Lee, who has had some seriously iffy choice of roles in the past (he was in both Elektra and The King of Fighters...oof), finally gets to show what he's made of with the brooding tortured ninja, Harada. No, he's not playing the creator of Tekken, it's just a coincidence...
"NOW KISS" - my brain, all the time.
Though it's not really a cerebral film, The Wolverine's attempts at thematic resonance are actually done pretty well (much better than in, say, Man of Steel). Though the blunt dialogue is far too on the nose - one realises the film wants us to consider Wolverine as a ronin when one character says "YOU ARE LIKE A RONIN" at Wolverine - it's in the way that Logan acts in response that develops that point more artistically. As the term implies, Logan has been fighting for years without a 'master' and thus, without a cause - he desires nothing and so aims to claim nothing, and he stands for no ideal and so has nothing to defend. And ultimately, his victory in the film - and redemption, perhaps - stem from his decision to pledge his suddenly-mortal life in servitude to another. It's a nice, simple message that really helps the film's momentum and narrative coast through some otherwise tricky spots.
And then there's the last half-hour. Oh boy. Now, The Wolverine doesn't climax in quite as big or explosive a fashion as either Man of Steel or Iron Man 3 - in fact it might be the 'smallest' action finale even amongst the X-Men franchise as a whole. But what it lacks in scale it makes up for in nuttery, as Logan gets turned into a pincushion by ninja archers, then winds up trapped in a twenty-storey science lab built on a sheer cliff (because of course it is) and must fight for his life against a giant action figure and a snake-themed spin on Poison Ivy. And I mean, seriously, Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova) is exactly Poison Ivy, from the death by kissing to the vampish green wardrobe right down to the big hair. Hell, Khodchenkova's line delivery (which might have been dubbed, but didn't seem so to me) even sounds like Uma Thurman in that one Batman film we all refuse to talk about (despite it doing its job better than The Dark Knight Rises...). It's all fantastically silly but it just about manages to work through sheer excitement, and the film's success in convincing you that said action figure is in fact a genuine mortal threat to Logan's invincible butt.
Bonus goodness: Wolverine gets to say "Go f*** yourself" again. I guess that's his catchphrase now. I approve of this mightily.
If I owned a van, I'd totally get this painted on the side.
Metal as f***, man.
The Bad: While I respect director James Mangold for taking his time with the story, and appreciate the desire to make the movie work as a character piece first and an action flick second, the first hour or so of The Wolverine can get very, very dull at times. Sure, we needed to have scenes like Logan having a chat with a really old guy, or Logan attending a downbeat funeral, and it's hard to make scenes like that lively, but even beyond those, the amount of time spent with Logan just standing around talking is frustrating, especially since so much of it seems less focused on the characterisation and more on explaining Japanese culture to us stupid Westerners. (thanks for teaching me what to do with chopsticks, movie, now could we get some more ninjas up in here?) There are also 2 very tiresome repeated moments that wind up almost as joking memes - Logan Falling Asleep and Logan Dreaming Of Jean. The amount of scene transitions handled purely by Logan being knocked out or falling unconscious and waking up someplace else is almost hilarious, and must surely be in double-digits. And yes, it's pretty cool the first time a phantom Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) appears to taunt Logan from beyond the grave...but then it keeps happening and she always says the same damn thing:
Jean: "Come and be dead with me, Logan."
Logan: "I can't, I've got stuff. Y'know, bears to avenge. Also Japan stuff I guess."
Jean: "Pleeeeeeaaaaase?"
Logan: "Uh, I'll think about it."
I was actually super excited when Mangold in interviews compared the Logan/Jean moments to the interaction between Gaius Baltar and 'Head' Six in Battlestar Galactica, but really it's not nearly the same. Six was mercurial and unknowable, her aims and attitude switching frequently and making her presence always feel relevant and important. Phantom Jean only has one leaden note and she hits it the same way every time. (also, this might be a more subjective issue, but I didn't feel any real chemistry between Jackman and Janssen here - odd since I didn't have that problem with X1-3)
Most inconvenient dentists' chair EVER.
You remember how I said the neat way the film carries through on its themes kind of overcomes the muddy plotting? While I stand by that, it doesn't mean I didn't notice the muddy plotting. There often seems to be 3 separate villain factions at play in The Wolverine and they all want different things. Some want Logan dead, others need him alive; some want Mariko captured, others want her free. Ultimately it all boils down to just one singular villain and his henchmen, and every other thread is basically washed away without consequence, which begs the question - why were they even established in the first place? Well, actually, the reason is clear; it's done to obfuscate the real plot for as long as possible so the resolution feels like a surprise. This mostly fails; it's still not a surprise, and if they'd actually revealed the 'twist' earlier it might have left them enough time to give the main villain the kind of depth the filmmakers think he has. Also, the manner in which suspense is built is the cheapest kind possible - characters who know more than enough of what's going on to piece it all together but simply refuse to say anything aloud because who the f*** knows.
Also, that last half hour, while glorious in its own way, is so massively at odds tonally with the rest of the movie that it kind of knocks you sideways. The result is that you'll either wonder why the whole film couldn't be this crazy rather than waste your time with all the tourist's guide to Tokyo rubbish, or you'll bemoan the fact that a smart-paced soulful character odyssey has been derailed by a bunch of cartoon characters fighting. (I'm in the former camp) Either way, it's uncomfortable.
Sadly, the earlier action beats in the film don't really match the nuttery of that last gasp. We've all seen Logan bloodlessly slicing his way through nondescript human henchmen before; that they're now yakuza instead of black-ops military types doesn't really make a difference. Beyond that, there's a tense scrap on a bullet train that turns very silly when Logan takes the fighting up top and...not a lot else. This is a 'Wolverine in Japan' movie where Wolverine only fights ninjas once and even then he mostly tries to run away from them. Try and tell me that's not a missed opportunity, I dare you.
They wouldn't be littering the duck pond on HIS watch.
The Verdict: The Wolverine is good, not great. It has moments of slight genius and stands as its own unique thing within the X-Men universe, and is probably the single best interpretation of the title character we'll ever see. Even so, as an action film it's only okay, and as a sedated character journey it's a little too sedated. Ultimately, its worst crime might be just shooting for 'good' when the comic-book movies of today have conditioned audiences to expect greatness as standard. 7 out of 10, with a good .5 of that down to the obligatory teaser scene that thankfully doesn't force you to sit through all the credits.
WOLVERINE: Still prone to losing his shirt more often than the
average Twilight male lead.
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