'Wolverine' Sequel Claws Its Way to Middle of X-Men Pack

Adamantium-clawed Logan (Hugh Jackman) confronts his own mortality in Japan in The Wolverine.

The quality of the X-Men movies hasn't been the most consistent over the franchise's decade-plus run. When the series belts out rock solid installments such as X2 and X-Men: First Class, they're not just superior superhero films, but rank amongst the best of the their respective years. But then again, the franchise also includes X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Feel free to erase those two from canon.

Much like 2009's X-Men Origins, The Wolverine is a standalone feature that focuses solely on Hugh Jackman's adamantium-clawed loner, Wolverine. Set one year after The Last Stand, Wolverine is summoned to Japan to fulfill the dying wishes of Yashida, an industrial tycoon whose life he saved during the Nagasaki attacks. Yashida offers Wolverine an opportunity to strip away his immortality and put an end to eternal suffering.

It might be a combination of audiences still stomaching the rancid Origins prequel or the unfortunate truth of having to follow up both Iron Man 3 and Man of Steel within mere months, but The Wolverine is left digging for scraps left over from an already jam-packed summer. While not on par with the first two movies or First Class, The Wolverine does have its fair share of hard-hitting entertaining moments.

Director James Mangold (Walk the Line, Knight and Day) transports the clawed loner halfway around the globe for a personal journey in Japan, which several fans of the comics will recall as an arc from the 80s. As a force to be reckoned with in previous installments, seeing Wolverine mortally vulnerable surprisingly grounds the film in a more realistic atmosphere for the superhero genre.

In his sixth outing, Hugh Jackman again own the Wolverine role, finally given the opportunity to be the animalistic lone wolf rather than a mutant leading his kind into war against humans and other mutants. Jackman doesn't require the rest of his X-Men brethren standing alongside him to keep The Wolverine afloat. With the exception of being occasionally tormented in his dreams by deceased mutant Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), this solo project is confidently anchored by Jackman's experience with the character.

The Wolverine starts off shrouded in much mystery surrounding why Wolverine is required to travel to Japan and the agendas at work there. But once Wolverine is assigned an impromptu task to protect Yashida's granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the meat of The Wolverine plot isn't quite as intriguing as expected from the firm opening. With the exception of a fight on a bullet train, which is much better executed in its entirety than the ludicrous preview snippets, Wolverine's relegated to the boring protector role rather than the no-nonsense powerhouse. 

Much of that decline is attributed to the uneven screenplay by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank, but the missteps along the way set the stage for a finale that nearly brings The Wolverine back full-circle to the level of initial quality. But Wolverine still lacks a formidable and compelling villain, having to settle for the completely forgettable Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova), whose greatest asset is her wicked tongue.

The Wolverine isn't exactly what fans of the X-Men film franchise are accustomed to, but it does open many doors to newer opportunities to explore comic arcs that might not have been given second thought to turn into future installments. With time-travel crossover X-Men: Days of Future Past on the horizon for next summer and potential X-Force film as early as 2016, The Wolverine keeps this mutant franchise on the path to success.

Like its main character, The Wolverine takes a beating here and there, but heals itself of plotting wounds with continuous sequences of spectacle and thrills worthy of the X-Men brand.

GRADE: B- (7/10)