THE WOLVERINE (James Mangold). 126 minutes. Opens Friday (July 26). For venues and times, see listings. Rating: NNNN
As if responding to the hubbub over the exploitation of 9/11 imagery in summer blockbusters, The Wolverine (definite article sic) jacks up the stakes, opening on nothing less than Fat Man dropping on Nagaski, August 9, 1945.
Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is on the scene at the time of the bombing, like a superhero Forrest Gump. Decades later, our lone wolf hero is rousted out of his solitary hideout by a soldier he rescued that day, and ends up stripped of his powers and ping-ponging through an overwrought Japanese conspiracy involving ninjas, the Yakuza and an enormous adamantium samurai.
As Marvel Comics’ darkest, broodingest property – basically its Dark Knight equivalent – The Wolverine seemed fated for stuffy seriousness. And while certain attempts to play the film as a quiet chamber drama about a man with retractable metal claws fall flat, director James Mangold keeps the The Wolverine chugging along.
Though the plot is bogged down by dizzying double and triple crosses, the action is uniformly superb. A breathless melee atop the roof of a speeding bullet train, and the late-in-the-game storming of a mountain village are memorably gripping.
And unlike DC’s dour Dark Knight (or Man Of Steel), The Wolverine actually bothers to reckon with the realities of its grim violence. Here, bad guys aren’t just dispatched or locked away: they die, and their deaths seem to wear on the other characters.
Significantly improving on the silliness of the character’s first X-Men-free outing, Marvel has turned out a movie that fits one of its most compelling characters as snugly as an indestructible steel skeleton. Could be shorter, though.
