K-SCORE: 15
Director: James Mangold
“only really has two mutants”
Writer: Mark Bomback, Scott Frank
Starring: Hugh Jackman
Spoiler Level: Minor
This not-quite an X-men film features Hugh Jackman in Japan for no reason, absurdly wrapped up in a convoluted political and familial Japanese conflict with a woman named Mariko and her seventeen not-so-secretly evil relatives. Of course it isn’t good. This X-men franchise is like a towel that was once wet and now is being wrung out with heavy hands and an iron bar to squeeze every last drop of potential interest from its ripped, wrinkled remnants. The Wolverine is long and boring and none of the characters do anything that makes sense.
There are tons of dream sequences - okay - next to time travel, dreams are the most challenging subject matter a story can tackle. It’s not satisfying to see characters constantly waking up elsewhere and then realizing that what you were watching didn’t actually happen as part of the “real” narrative.
Probably the biggest issue though is the film only really has two mutants: Wolverine and the gross, almost-powerless Viper, who dresses in a sexy green jumpsuit and makes out with people before she kills them, which is kind of like a different super-villain I know. Venoumous... Vine... no I can’t think of it.
Against all odds, the film manages to be worth the pain of its first two hours for the final five minutes. A mysterious metal case is given to the unnecessary but prominently featured character Yokizo in the corner of the background during the dramatic kissing denouement. You expect to see that case again, somehow have it show up in the final few shots, but no. It just draws focus and then vanishes. Such a stunning and obvious display of filmic ineptitude slipping past every director, every editor, every producer and making it to my screen is enjoyable in its own way.