X-Men: Origins: Wolverine

Cinema review
Directed by Gavin Hood
Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, Ryan Reynolds
Release date 29 April 2009 (UK)

Logan (Jackman) and Victor (Schreiber) are part of a clandestine team of mutants under the command of Colonel William Stryker (Huston). After a mission to retrieve a meteorite fragment ends in violence, Logan walks away in pursuit of a normal life. Years later Logan works as a lumberjack with his girlfriend Kayla (Collins). But then Victor comes looking for him…

Though the awkwardly titled X-Men: Origins: Wolverine has arrived in a wave of publicity, it hasn’t entirely been of the positive variety. Firstly, there were reports of clashes between director Gavin Hood and Fox on the direction the movie should take. Then there was the media storm (well, OK, it was more of a media breeze) after a work print was leaked online, prompting some muted early reactions.

Happily, nothing about the finished movie gives hints to this early turbulence. It may not be in the same league as the first two X-Men movies but it’s a slick, entertaining blockbuster and certainly an improvement on X-Men: The Last Stand.

Following an 1845-set prologue in which the kiddie Logan (initially known as James Howlett) and Victor discover they’re mutant bros, we cut to a tremendous credit montage that charts the adult siblings’ escapades through various wars (the pair don’t appear to age once they hit 40). After this, the film settles into a reasonably predictable but briskly paced narrative stuffed with betrayal, love, genetic experiments and the non-stop battle between a vengeful Wolverine and his enemies.

Essentially, most of the movie consists of a succession of action-filled vignettes: Team X’s missions in Nigeria; Wolverine undergoing experimental surgery that results in adamantium being pumped into his body; Wolverine battling helicopter-riding bad guys; Wolverine battling enemies on the streets of New Orleans; Wolverine battling bad guys on a secret island and so forth.

While these sequences are undoubtedly impressively staged (if a little CG-reliant), there is no mind-blowing conversation-sparking set piece to rival, say, The Dark Knight’s opening bank job scene or The Incredible Hulk’s favela chase, and the action isn’t as original or as beautifully staged as in the recent similarly-themed (if equally flawed) Push.

Fortunately at the heart of all this non-stop carnage lies a great character. After three movies, Jackman has well and truly bedded into the role of Wolverine, and he obviously relishes the opportunity to explore the claw-popping hero's backstory. Whether growling in anger, howling in pain, leaping into action or engaging in some self-deprecating wit, the man formerly known as Logan is everything you could want in an action hero.

Liev Schreiber, while perhaps not the first person you’d picture as a pumped-up villain, is surprisingly perfect as Victor Creed/Sabretooth, an almost Comedian-esque psycho with flashes of redemption - though his readiness to turn on his beloved brother is never entirely convincing. Danny Huston, meanwhile, offers up the perfect mix of charm, dangerous ambition and quiet creepiness as Stryker – an altogether more erudite baddie than 30 Days of Night’s Marlow. Elsewhere, other characters (Silver Fox, John Wraith, Gambit) don’t get much of a look-in: but then this is a movie called ‘Wolverine’, and hopefully subsequent Origin stories (depending on the success of this one) will flesh out other superheroes a little more.

Though it's a film with its fair share of loss and rage, this was never meant to be a dark and complex superhero-come-existential-drama like The Dark Knight. For the most part it's a bright, pacey actioner that features a handful of very funny, almost cartoonish scenes: witness Hugh Jackman’s naked dash from the mutant lab or the glorious boxing showdown between Wolverine and Dukes. The downside of this light touch is that the dialogue and situations verge dangerously on the cheesy side at times, especially one particularly silly last-minute appearance from a familiar face…

Whether this is quite enough to resuscitate the franchise after X-Men: The Last Stand remains to be seen. But X-Men: Origins: Wolverine has enough energy and respect for its comic book roots to ensure it's an eminently watchable blockbuster that is at least never dull. And we’ll snikt to that!

Keep watching after the credits: different territories boast different additional scenes. Matt McAllister