The Wolverine

Rating-9/10

The good
-The characters
-The action
-The villains

The bad
-Questionable camera
-Unfocused plot

Scene during the credits

The film follows Wolverine aka Logan, (played by Hugh Jackman) after he is dragged into events surrounding the daughter of an old acquaintance, Mariko (Tao Okomoto) in Japan.

Wolverine is the same terrific performance by Jackman, selling the character from the classic Marvel comics. The other actors adapt well to their roles, though the real stand out was the villain, Viper (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova); the type of villain that is always several steps ahead, with a very unique and interesting ability. (My only regret is that she didn’t receive enough screen time).
A lot of the film focuses on the relationship between Logan and Mariko, which feels very genuine, thanks to some brilliant acting by both Jackman and Okomoto.
Thankfully the film avoids the cliche fish out of water scenarios, except for when it highlights the differences between Logan and Mariko, or a few times when it's for the sake of humour, though these are thankfully sparse and fairly original.

The action included a lot of variety, with close quarters fistfights, to martial arts sword fighting and a spectacular fight on the roof of a bullet train. Only one scene suffered from a claustrophobic and unstable camera, which the film thankfully outgrew by the end.

SPOILER TALK

The plot had a clearly defined three act structure, though the middle act seems to go nowhere in the grand scheme of the film. However the third act really impressed me with a fantastic twist of the main villain; the kind of twist where you don’t see it coming, but you can see the clues looking back in hindsight.

END OF SPOILERS

Minor gripes concerning the camera in a few scenes and a story that could have benefited from a little more focus do little to sway my opinion of this film. It’s fantastic and I highly recommend it.

AS A FRANCISE

Wolverine is set after the events of X-men The last stand, with a lot of focus being on Logan’s guilt over Jean’s death. However this doesn’t really distract from the film, allowing the story to do its own thing, making it feel very easy to adjust to even if you don’t know the story so far. At the same time it fits very well into the X-men film storyline, so fans of the series also benefit in that regard.

Mariko’s reaction to Logan’s claws seems very refreshing, especially when compared to former love interests Jean or Silver fox interactions to him, or even in his relationship with Rouge. She seems to calm him down and balances him out in a way that feels very natural when I think about his character in the previous titles in the series.

I can’t comment on the films faithfulness to the source comics, however from my experience the X-men film series is very good at paying tribute to the original stories that inspired them while still doing their own thing. I’ll allow Wolverine fans to make their own assessment in that regard.