You know what the best part of Hugh Jackman’s acting is? He’s always intense. He’s intense fighting bad guys. He’s intense waking up. He’s intense in the shower. He’s intense reading a book. He’s intense on the can. I imagine Wolverine coming home, walking the pathway, scaring the neighbor’s dog, collecting the mail on the stoop and noticing – a letter. The camera leans in as he uses a retractable claw for a letter opener. The music rises. He pulls out the tri-folded paper to discover … SPAM! And then he gives the camera a look of such stern force, we’re sure that all bogus Nigerian princes will die this very evening.
I’ve lost track of the X-Men franchise. I mean there was a X-Man movie, then there were more. Then we started to explore the origins of certain X-Men. This included Wolverine (Jackman). So The Wolverine isn’t about his origins, per se, but it certainly is backstory. How much Wolverine backstory do you suppose we need? Why don’t I just get on with it? The Wolverine is all about Japan. Wolverine, of course, doesn’t age so he’s as old as we want him to be at pretty much any time in human history. When this story opens, he’s being held prisoner in Nagasaki in WWII. How you capture and hold a guy who is immune to bullets is a pretty good trick, but I won’t quibble. Wolverine knows an atomic bomb drop is coming. How? Dunno; maybe he had the power of clairvoyance once upon a time. He manages to save a captor in his prison hole. And, decades later, that guard turns out to be the richest business man in Japan. Who knew?
Fastforward to whatever we’re calling present day. Guard Yashida proves powerful but not ageless and insists he thank Wolverine one last time before buying the bonsai forest. Wolverine doesn’t want to be there, which kinda makes us not want to be there, either, but geishas force him to shave and bathe which makes us happier. Hugh Jackman is on-screen either shirtless or in a wife-beater for roughly 80 minutes of 
movie. That will please a few of you. On is deathbed, Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) offers Wolverine the gift of age and frailty. This is the high point of Wolverine – the deep understanding that immortality and immunity can be a curse. It also makes the plot move. When Wolverine fights off bad guys at the funeral, he eats at least a dozen bullets. Battles get pretty boring if bullets have limited or no effect. Hey, check it out, Wolverine is hurt; he does bleed and limp and stuff. Interesting. Trying to imagine Wolverine in an old folks home is a bit of a lark. “Yes, yes, sir, of course you fought in the Civil War … now would you please get back in bed? And I don’t know if that’s a middle finger, but I don’t appreciate it.”
After this point, however, the movie is mostly about Wolverine tooling around with any one of three potential femme fatales (Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima and Svetlana Khodchenkova) – well, four if you count his recurring nightmares in bed aside Famke Janssen–all while figuring out what he’s doing in Japan. I saw to the end and I still kinda don’t know. Wolverine seemed like a poor excuse to bring a comic book to life – but this particular episode ain’t bad.
♪In touch with the pound
I’m on the hunt for solitude
Smell like ground round, I’m shorn like a hound
And I’m pungent like the wolf
Straddle the line between stern and firm
I don’t get levity
Is a bar near? I could use beer
And I’m thirsty like the wolf ♫
Rated PG-13, 126 Minutes
D: James Mangold
W: Mark Bomback & Scott Frank
Genre: From the lesser files of X-Men
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who cannot get enough of Hugh’s upper torso
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The SPCA
♪Parody inspired by “Hungry Like the Wolf”
I’m not sure if I’m more critical of comic book movies or not, but once again I was dumbfounded by how dumb this movie was.
As you mention, the seminal point of this film should be the offering of death and whether Wolverine wants to escape. But that literally life-altering decision is thought about for all of two seconds before we have to get back to more fighting.
And I can’t make one jot of sense of the ending. The ninja guy tells the girl that they have to do something to Wolverine to fulfil her grandfather’s wishes. She runs to try and help him, so the ninja changes his mind and decides to help Wolverine instead. Why? Because she thought not hurting her friend was more important than fulfilling a plan you haven’t explained to her? This shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
And what exactly was the point of Viper apart from having another mutant/attractive white woman in the film?
Once again an X-Men film has left me more annoyed than anything else. Let’s hope X-Men does A Christmas Carol is better.