The Wolverine

Are you ready for a brooding Wolverine? A tortured and haunted Wolverine? A sad Wolverine?

Well that’s what you get when Hugh Jackman and his awesome Aussie abs return in THE Wolverine, the sequel to Wolverine. I guess Fox decided they needed to dispense with all of that pesky numbering stuff. Maybe the next one will be called, And More Wolverine or The The Wolverine.

Set some time after X-Men: The Last Stand, we find Wolverine a.k.a. Logan (Jackman) is living a tortured, haunted existence pining over the loss of the love of his life, Jean Gray (Famke Janssen). He’d rather just die and be with her in the hereafter, but, as we know, Wolverine is immortal.

However, an old friend from Japan, Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), is on his death bed and he has asked our hairy hero to come visit him one last time. Yep, something fishy is going on as evil forces are trying to lure Wolverine to Japan to steal his immortality, and our unshaven protagonist is weakened just as he needs to do everything he can to save a damsel in distress, Mariko (Tao Okamoto), from mutants, the Japanese mob and ninjas, ninjas and more ninjas.

The Wolverine certainly is an improvement over the first one, which almost killed the entire X-Men franchise, but this installment needs some help in storytelling.

Director James Mangold does a great job with the action scenes, especially a fantastic fight scene with Wolverine on top of a bullet train speeding through Japan. And, the special effects are far superior to the first Wolverine movie where his adamantium claws looked faker than a campaign apology from Anthony Weiner.

But, where’s the detail and the mystery? Once Wolverine is on the run with his love interest, the plot is forgotten and undeveloped. The only surprises are how many times Jackman flashes his ripped pecs and biceps. Heck, his muscles are practically co-stars in this film, and I think the women in the crowd were hoping for more slo-mo scenes of Jackman running shirtless through some sort of fire Baywatch style.

How these bad guys want to take advantage of Wolverine’s special powers becomes an afterthought, and we never get to learn enough about some of the new characters like Yukio (Rila Fukushima) or Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova, who is hamming it up a bit too much), and a complex conspiracy is tossed aside after one scene that explains it all as simply as possible, but never sheds enough light on it to make it interesting or important.

The Wolverine ends up being a decent move in the end, and make sure you stick around for that scene during the credits that will make you glad you bought a ticket.

The Wolverine is rated PG-13 for sequences of intense sci-fi action and violence, some sexuality and language.