Review of The Wolverine (2013) by Gimly M — 06 Jun 2014

I've never been particularly impressed with James Mangold's work, although he's proven to not be completely without talent, he also never struck me as an a-grade director. Couple this with the fact that Wolverine's last solo outing was probably the worst thing to happen to the X-Men franchise, and you'll understand why I didn't have particularly high expectations for this Eastern-set piece.

So it was with pleasant surprise I found myself actually rather enjoying the film. It wasn't cluttered or despairingly exposition-y. It was riddled with gangster-elements and noirisms. The brutality was turned back up again, and the awful... Just awful effects department behind Origins: Wolverine has clearly been shot into the sun, resulting in a tight and entertaining bit of cinema.

Then we got to the third act and the whole fuckin' thing fell apart.

Yes I'd deeply enjoyed the first two acts, and no amount of woeful finale will take that away, but it did result in the movie as a cohesive whole feeling pretty... Mediocre.

Even choosing to ignore that, there are really no characters of any interest other than Wolverine himself (which I suppose for a film that is literally called "The Wolverine" that's probably excusable to some degree). There wasn't a single villain of the piece that was likeable, intimidating or even so much as had understandable motives, let alone interesting. To be honest, by the end, The Wolverine feels outright dumb.

But it's not bad. And taking the thing in its entirety, it sits somewhere in quality around about the middle of this franchise, and around about the middle of films in general. A seemingly solid movie that unfortunately winds up being pretty middle of the ground.

59%.

-Gimly.