I was somewhat familiar with Wolverine’s Japan story. I never read any of the actual comic books, but I saw it on the early 90’s cartoon and wasn’t very impressed. Combine that with the subpar previous wolverine solo film, and as you might expect my anticipation wasn’t very high for The Wolverine. I had no idea I would be sitting through one of the best X-men films to date.
The Good
The film is wolverine at his most angry, visious, and dangerous. Even though he’s weakened for a good portion of the movie he’s still kickin ass and raging all over Japan. For most of the movie It’s also a nice break from all the over-the-top special effects of the other summer super hero movies.
The love story was good enough for me and his sidekick was awesome. I actually liked it better that the one in the first Wolverine movie or his relationship with Jean in the X-Men movies.
The action was great. I thought the bullet train sequence would be corny, but it was intense! The giant samurai suit fight was pretty cool.
The Bad
Unlike the origins movie, I don’t have many gripes here. Shingen could have been a little more prominently featured. I liked the non giant Silver Samurai a little better and I thought the dynamic between him and Wolverine was interesting. They also should have given him powers. The main villain was all right, but his motivations were a little shaky to me.
That Viper is one of the weaker villains in super hero cinema. I was really annoyed every time she was on screen. If they’ll be doing a directors cut of the movie they should go ahead and cut most of her scenes. She could have just been a normal scientist and it would have worked. Her powers were kind of cheesy to me. With that said, she wasn’t a very significant character anyway.
Overall, I’d say go check this one out if you like action movies, X-Men movies, or superhero movies. It gets my recommendation. Wolverine in Japan is totally cool with me now.
