(Download The Wolverine) Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), the most expressive character in the world of the X-Men, is in this film to the Japan of today.(The Wolverine Download) In a world unknown to him, he is confronted with unexpected opponents. What follows is a fight to the death that will change him forever. For the first time in his life he is vulnerable and he is severely physically and mentally challenged. Not only because of the deadly steel of the samurai, but also by his inner fight against immortality.
An antithesis to recent overblown blockbusters,(Download The Wolverine Movie) The Wolverine contains a strong story that delves into the many complexities of the popular comic book character without sacrificing the action spectacle that these films are known for.
(Download The Wolverine) While blockbuster season has showcased one overwhelming action movie after another, solitude has been found in this most unlikely of places. Not to say that The Wolverine is as quiet as a church mouse, but it is a superhero movie that values the moments in between the action sequences & manages to keep our interest while doing so.
(Download The Wolverine) When looking at the people involved, perhaps it should not be a surprise. Director James Mangold has quietly created a filmography of varied, solid character rich works ranging from the urban western Copland to quintessential biopic Walk the Line. Action is also something that Mangold has done before, and he very well knows that to make a good superhero movie is to invest in the heroes themselves, which esteemed screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects),(Watch The Wolverine Online) Scott Frank (Out of Sight) and Mark Bomback (Unstoppable) do in their take on a popular story-arc from the 1982 Wolverine limited series comic book, where the popular mutant hero spends time in Japan.
(Download The Wolverine) That is where The Wolverine opens with a stunning sequence on Hiroshima, the capital of Japan’s largest island where the United States Air Force dropped a nuclear bomb and effectively ended World War II, chillingly re-enacted here to set the stage for an action drama about death and immortality as Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) saves a Japanese soldier from certain doom. 50 odd years later and that same soldier (Hal Yamanouchi) wants to repay his debt by offering an emotionally and spiritually wounded Logan the one thing he can’t have: to die an honourable death.
(Download The Wolverine) The use of Japan as a backdrop is a welcome change to the usual metropolis-to-be-destroyed setting which most of these films utilise, as to is the use of Japanese warrior culture which adds dimensions to a character that five film appearances in is still a mystery when compared to the open books of Spider-Man and Batman, with the labelling of Wolverine as a Ronin (that is a “samurai without a master”) the perfect description for a superhero whose honour bound commitment to do what is right is countered by his anti-authoritarian and anti-tradition stance.
Built like a brick shit house and snarling like a champ, Jackman once again delivers a committed performance in what has to be one of the more dedicated relationships between a major actor and character. The internal angst which Logan/Wolverine suffers is kicked up a notch here, and Jackman perfectly expresses those emotions with the same intensity in which he slices a baddy in two with those adamantium claws.
(Download The Wolverine) The Wolverine features its title character at his most vulnerable, most savage and –above all- most human. It is an existential superhero movie without the overbearing weight of Man of Steel or distracting smarminess of Iron Man 3. Many will pay top dollar for the action sequences, but will truly get their money’s worth from the moments in between.
(Download The Wolverine) Wolverine (now apparently worthy of a pretentious "the" before his name) might be the most antisocial of all the nameable-by-even-non-comic-book-aficionados superheroes (That trait was the core of his very funny, three-word cameo in the X-Men prequel). The key to his success as an effective character, it seems, is that he must have other characters with a certain level of distinctiveness off of which to play (He's not a team player, but he plays better as part of a team). The opening scenes of The Wolverine—those leading up to the inciting incident—are the movie's best because they understand that the character's appeal—beyond his brutal fighting style with adamantium claws that burst out of and retract into his knuckles, obviously—is in his interaction with others.
He doesn't give a damn about anything or anyone. We like him despite or for it, and his antipathy and misanthropy only make the rare instances when he does care about something or someone all the more surprising.
(Download The Wolverine) With this in mind, here are the two central problems with The Wolverine: 1.) It doesn't have a single character who is developed enough to serve as a foil for our hero, and 2.) speaking of characters who aren't developed, that includes Logan (Hugh Jackman), our eponymous superhero. Yes, this is the sixth time (including that cameo) that the character as portrayed by Jackman has appeared on screen, so we at least understand the basics of this character by now. It has also become fairly clear by now that there is nothing more to the character than the basics, and here, even those don't matter so much.
(Download The Wolverine) In the movie's prologue—a dream (within a dream, because the screenplay by Mark Bomback, Scott Frank, and Christopher McQuarrie clearly wants to get all the character stuff out of the way as quickly and in as clichéd a way as possible)—Logan recalls his imprisonment in a Japanese POW camp near the end of World War II. In fact, he's in a sealed pit in a camp outside of Nagasaki. It's August 9, 1945, and before we have time to consider whether or not it's appropriate to use the mass killing of tens of thousands of people as the backdrop for what is essentially a chase sequence (Yes, he outruns the blast), the explosion happens.(Download The Wolverine) Logan rescues a guard (Ken Yamamura) and keeps him protected in the pit until it's safe to leave (Yes, he can heal from the burns of a nuclear explosion).
In the present day, Logan, currently residing in the forest, is confronted by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a psychic who's good with a sword, who informs him that her master Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), the guard from the camp, is dying and wants to see the man who saved his life one last time. Reluctantly, Logan agrees, and the two fly to Tokyo.
(Download The Wolverine) At this point, the movie becomes an almost exclusively plot-driven affair—and a tedious one, too. Building upon the political machinations and personal betrayals that occur after Yashida's death, the screenplay gives us the old man's granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), her father (Hiroyuki Sanada), her government-employed fiancé (Brian Tee), a ninja (Will Yun Lee) who promises to protect her, a mutant (The movie seems to forget that characters such as this exist) named Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova) with a serpent's tongue and a toxic case of halitosis, a bunch of yakuza goons, and a 15-foot robot samurai in a secret facility. (Download The Wolverine) Logan becomes caught up in the mess—and it is a mess of characters with motivations that change on a whim and conspiracies that involve characters who have mere minutes of time on screen—when he stops Mariko from being kidnapped at her grandfather's funeral.
(Download The Wolverine) Before that, Viper somehow puts his mutation into remission, leaving him vulnerable to wounds from the various hits, slashes, and gunfire that he encounters (Somehow, though, there are no gaping, bloody holes on his knuckles after bringing his razor-sharp claws back into his body).(Download The Wolverine) It's a solid conceit for the character, especially given that his immortality ensures there is never any real peril for him (Yashida says Logan's immortality is a curse; let's face it: If one is going to be cursed, that's a pretty good one to have).
(Download The Wolverine) The movie squanders it, though, on a story that sees our hero as a supporting character in a confounding and routinely dull tale of corporate intrigue (or whatever the opposite of that is). The Wolverine does occasionally see Logan take out his claws and rip bad guys to shreds (The two extremes are an inventive fight on top of a bullet train, in which the participants must leap to avoid obstacles, and the wearying final confrontation with the big robot),(Watch The Wolverine Online) but even that starts to feel routine fairly quickly. By the end, we're left wondering if this character is worth the trouble.