The Wolverine hits the ground running with plenty of intrigue to start off the film. The setup of the story is interesting with Logan going to Tokyo to say goodbye to Yoshida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi), a man he rescued during World War II, who is currently on his deathbed. Yoshida offers Logan a way to take away his immortality and finally get a chance to die peacefully. Logan refuses his offer and (MINOR SPOILER ALERT) Yoshida dies causing all hell to break loose when a mutant (Svetlana Khodchenkova) takes his powers while also having to protect Yoshida's granddaughter (Tao Okomato) from a slew of enemies looking to kill her. On top of the intriguing story, there are a couple full-throttle action scenes to really get things going out of the gate. The film really makes use of its Japanese backdrop to stage some killer martial-arts style fights to create a unique flare that helps distinguish this from other recent superhero films. As expected though, The Wolverine is dominated by Hugh Jackman. It's always a lot of fun to watch Jackman in this role and he has made this character one of the more memorable superheroes of the modern era. He builds upon this character even more in this film as Logan is given a bit more emotional depth on top of the typical gruff demeanor and flashes of sarcastic wit he has displayed in the past (and continues to do here.)
However, The Wolverine is not without its share of issues. The pacing is a huge problem here. The middle of the film drags hardcore killing a lot of the momentum of the very strong first act. I found myself drifting off waiting for something meaningful or exciting to happen, but nothing did until the beginning of the final act. The ending left to a bit be desired as well, but at least it wrapped things up and had a couple of decent fight sequences and a twist that I didn't see coming (although it's really not that great of a twist.) The film also suffers from having lame villains. The villains are pretty underdeveloped and are only on-screen for about 20 minutes of the almost two hour runtime. Admittedly the viper chick that infects Logan is kind of cool and was nice to look at, but she really wasn't much of a nemesis for him. The whole lack of outside conflict kind of left this film feeling a bit empty. Logan's inner-conflict is clearly the primary conflict of the film which works just fine, but a film like say Iron Man 3 managed the balance inner struggle and outside struggle perfectly. On the whole, The Wolverine is a solid yet flawed superhero film with some moments of greatness. Now just bring on X-Men: Days of Futures Past!
3.5/5 Stars
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