Review of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) by Halfwelshman — 05 Jan 2012

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a seriously flawed film. The first fifteen minutes or so are really quite entertaining - a visually stunning and visceral title sequence with Wolverine and Sabretooth literally running through history, and fighting in the American Civil War, WWI, WWII and Vietnam, whilst being accompanied by Harry Gregson-Williams' suitably epic score.

We then have a quick trip to Nigeria, where each member of the elite team of mutants Wolverine joins demonstrates their skills in a spectacular fashion whilst fighting a warlord and his henchmen. After this first act though, the film becomes drab and lifeless, poorly plotted and filled with cliche.

The actors' performances are generally sub-par - Hugh Jackman attempts to get by on a variety of grumpy facial expressions, Lynn Collins is wooden, Will.i.am should stick to his music career, and Danny Huston isn't even worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Brian Cox, let alone playing the same character Cox so perfectly portrayed in X2.

Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Durand are both entertaining enough, but in the film all too briefly, and a character with such fanboy devotion as Gambit deserves to be played by a much better actor than Taylor Kitsch.

The only person in the whole cast who really impresses is Liev Schreiber, who develops Sabretooth/Victor Creed from the hulking, brainless henchman he was in X-Men into an intelligent, driven and genuinely frightening antagonist in this film.

The film's screenplay, written by David Benioff and Skip Woods is truly woeful. No wonder the film feels so disconnected from any semblance of reality and the dialogue promotes far too many unintended snorts of laughter - the script resembles something a toddler scrawled with crayons.

Added to this some rather wobbly visual effects, boring and uncreative action sequences and a truly terrifying cameo by a de-aged Patrick Stewart, X-Men Origins: Wolverine becomes a pretty terrible example of a superhero film.

Hugh Jackman and director Gavin Hood (amazingly the same man behind the brilliant South African drama Tsotsi) have succeeded in making the most interesting character in the X-Men canon boring - we now know everything there is to know about the adamantium-clawed amnesiac's past, so he holds no more intrigue.

James Howlett, Logan, Wolverine, whatever you want to call him, he's just dull now.