The Wolverine: Lesser of the Wolverines

The Wolverine
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Will Yun Lee
Rated: 5.5/10
He is a superhero who wants to shed his immortality and die, he wants to be normal, he is unkempt and he keeps dreaming about a past love who is dead but never gone. By the looks of it, this is one sob story you may not want to associate with someone like Wolverine.
But, Hollywood is on a whim these days, wanting to add mortality, normality and humanness to all its superheros, and Hugh Jackman as Wolverine also gets caught in this wave to debrief — and even ground — some of those Marvel-ous beings.
But despite all the groans and the moans by Jackman, director James Goldman has been able to pull a fast one on his viewers — as in, with stunning sequences like the one he orchestrates atop a bullet train running at a develish speed of 300 miles an hour. He also adds some art to the pace by doing all that ninja stuff on white sheets of snow. Not just that, he cuts off Wolverine’s adamantium claws which you might consider to be the ultimate unforgivable audacity.
Lured by a smart Japanese redhead into coming out of his self-imposed exile from life, Wolverine takes a rocky flight to Tokyo where the patriarch of a hi-tech conglomerate is about to die on an extremely jazzy bed with insects holding on to his life deep within the organs. He is the samurai Wolverine had once saved from certain death when the Allied Forces were raining bombs in the south of the island. He is the man who now wants to relieve Wolverine of his immortality and have it transferred to himself, that’s the way he says he will repay him for what he did all those eons ago — grant him his wish to die.
Amid all this mulling over who gets to live, there is also a family succession war going on and all kind of dark elements are ready to take away his heiress granddaughter to certain death. Not that Wolverine is ready to give up his grumpiness even for one shot but you learn to live with it in the name of Hugh Jackman and the work that he has put in in so many previous Wolverines which very more captivating that this one.
Having forgiven Hugh Jackman for being so stuck on mortality that he forgets to enjoy his super-powers, Goldman gives you enough moments wherein you can settle down with your popcorn and enjoy the mean men being chased down by a superhero who also gets to be mortal for some part of the film.
His chemistry with the taller-than-any-Japanese-woman-ever Mariko is non-existent but what he shares with the men and their action-oriented existence makes you hold on to this ‘mortal’ one too.
 Source: Sunday Pioneer, 28 July 2013
 
 

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