Review of The Wolverine (2013) by Pixcelation — 09 Aug 2013

This review was published on www.Pixcelation.com by Andrew Korkmas.

The only way to start this review off is to say the following: I was pumped for “The Wolverine.” I like Japanese culture and I like seeing Hugh Jackman beat the bejesus out of people. I thought that these two things were a recipe for success. What I didn’t suspect was that despite the movie’s reverence to Japanese culture and indeed footage of Hugh Jackman taking out baddies, “The Wolverine” would ultimately fall in mediocre category.

The story follows the titular character’s chronicles in Japan. It starts as a simple visit to a dying friend and turns into preventing assassination plots on the young granddaughter of said friend faster than you can say “Psylocke” (a character who is not present in the movie. Sorry fans). The plot might’ve been interesting had either one of two things not happened: 1. The trailers spoiled far too much of it. And 2. It didn’t move at a normal pace. Yes “The Wolverine” now joins “Man of Steel” in the sluggish sloth story department. And like my viewing of “Man of Steel,” I almost fell asleep several times during the movie. If you haven’t seen the trailers then there might be some plot elements that keep you entertained but otherwise you’ll likely be checking your watch thinking to yourself “OK so, how much longer do I have to wait till someone gets stabbed?”.

For the most part, the acting all around is fairly uninteresting. Hugh Jackman does fine but everyone else doesn’t seem to put forth much of an emotional effort. None of the acting struck me as bad but nothing came close to impressing either. Though seeing as this is an action movie perhaps very few really care about this so let’s move on to the good stuff.

The action goes from interesting to tiresome depending on the scene. The bullet train battle was lively and creative (to a point) while the first action scene (a shoot out and chase sequence) was pretty forgettable. This problem is only worsened by, at times, some truly terrible cinematography. In said forgettable shoot out and chase sequence, the cameraman seemed to have taken a couple of Red Bulls because the camera bobs around incessantly for seemingly no reason and many shots are done so close to the action that it only obscures the fighting. Even in the more entertaining fights the camerawork never seems to do anything remotely spectacular.

One thing that many of the good “X-Men” movies have done is give a plethora of mutants with kick-ass powers. Unfortunately, “The Wolverine” seems to be in short supply of mutants and even the ones they offer are pretty forgettable. The Silver Samurai does show up for the last fight (as a robo-suit of sorts) and the fight is somewhat entertaining so at least there’s that.

I suppose I’ll end this review by saying the following: despite the fact that almost every poster of the movie features Wolverine wielding a katana, he does not ever use a katana save for a single moment right near the end. I don’t consider spoilers so much as preparing the viewer lest they receive the colossal let down that I did. But in the end, I found that I just didn’t care about the movie. It’s not really good and it’s not really bad either. I’ve only seen it once and don’t really plan to see it again. You could do much worse than seeing “The Wolverine” in theatres just as you could do much better in seeing another movie like “Pacific Rim.”.

“The Wolverine” gets a 5/10.