“The Wolverine”
Directed by James Mangold
Starring Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Svetlana Khodchenkova, Brian Tee, Hal Yamanouchi, Will Yun Lee, Ken Yamamura, Famke Janssen
Action, Adventure, Fantasy
126 Mins
PG-13

The Wolverine is as good a movie about Wolverine that audiences will probably ever get. While that sentiment comes saddled with a huge qualifier, I’d go so far as to claim that it’s a pretty good movie on its own terms. I dare say it might have been a great movie if directed by Darren Aronofsky.

As you may already know, Aronofsky was originally designed to direct this sixth Hugh Jackman-led X-Men film but when the devastating 2011 Tōhoku tsunami hit Japan, he backed out due to a projected major production delay (ironically enough moving onto a movie about impending giant waves: Noah). Even without his physical presence on set, the film carries on with his signature fingerprints. Displaying themes of isolation and madness amidst a particularly genre-defying and soul-rummaging performance from Hugh Jackman, this is (until late in the third act) the least cartoonish superhero movie to date.

We’ve been lead to believe that we know Wolverine before – having been presented his lackluster, but nonetheless enjoyable, origin story in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Where that fell short, this bone-bleached view really digs into his character by stripping away the mutant world around him and plopping him in the midst of a modern samurai story. In prior installations, Wolverine has been a player in a massive web of mutant characters occupying the X-universe – though his importance is more similar to a queen than a pawn, or even a knight. But this is truly Logan’s story. It’s the story of a Ronin – a samurai without a master. In stark contrast to prior outings, he is the only “superhero” on display, even though that ubiquitous label may not suffice in this case study. We’re mixing more with Logan than Wolverine here – the daring, rogue outcast rather than the metal-clawed animal.

Unlike Wolverine’s introduction in Origins, this installment does better than frantic doggy paddling while fishing for Logan’s inner suffering. While his adamantium-laced body could have easily sunk, Logan manages to swim – in full, fluid strokes. It’s always a treat to see a project that intends to do more than barely keeping afloat. Six films later, Logan feels as fresh and timely as ever because this particular iteration more closely resembles a passion project than a cash-grab. Upon inspecting the pieces that went into this, it is clear why.

Based on Wolverine’s beloved Japanese story arc, Oscar-winner Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) is behind the first draft, James Mangold, accolade-dressed director of Walk the Line and 3:10 to Yuma, sits in the captain’s chair, and Hugh Jackman as Logan is as committed to the role as ever. While a talent-mash doesn’t always result in success, this is more than just a sum of parts. Their acute commitment to novelty has inspired something largely unique that actually delivers on the promise to do something new. Though it does stray from the bold course coming into the home stretch, the willingness to ground this in a different culture, a different country and a different cage makes it an experimental success.

The film starts with a harrowing vignette in which Logan, a prisoner at a WWII Japanese war base, saves a young Japanese soldier, Yasida (Hal Yamanouchi), from incoming B52 bombers. With commanders performing traditional harakiri around them as a nuclear warhead detonates silently in the distance, the scene is measured in subtlety, foreshadowing motifs of the horror of war, the explosive shock of sudden desolation, and survivor’s guilt.

Waking from this flashback, Logan encounters the only thing really tethering this story to the previous X-Men entries: Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). Logan’s dreamy, introspective chats with Jean help flesh out the man he is and the internal battles he’s fighting. He’s a man who has sworn off violence, struggling with the animalistic urges that have driven him in the past. Considering that this story takes place after the events of X-Men: Last Stand, where Jean transforms into Phoenix, becomes a major mutant mind-terrorist and is killed by a remorseful Wolverine, we’re weary of her presence in the film, but soon learn that she is really just a mirror into Logan’s soul. As an ethereal guiding presence, Jean functions as a proxy to Logan’s conscious rather than a character with her own motive. In reality, Logan is truly alone.

Living amongst grizzly bears, blanketed in snow, and using evergreen trees as scratching posts, Logan is holed up in a graveyard of whiskey bottles, his unkempt beard and seedy appearance speaking volumes about his decaying fortitude. Shying away from the world at large, his attempts to go incognito run dry when his rage breaks lose in a bar fight and red-haired Japanese warrior, Yukio (Rila Fukushima), drags him out of his self-created hellhole to face fortune and glory all the way over in Japan.

Dumpster-rummaging, nightmare-driven exposition like this helps set the groundwork for Wolverine’s journey, which takes him from the backwoods of Canada to the towering megalopolis of Tokyo. At the behest of Yashida, the soldier he once saved turned tech-guru, now on his deathbed, Logan is wary to join but when he does, he’s a fish-out-of-water in Japan. With Japanese-based set design that calls attention to the ideas of old conflicting with new – tradition against innovation – Toyko is a living, breathing platform that serves to magnify Logan’s isolation.

Caught in a time warp where wounds heal and faces never age, Logan is haunted not by death but by life. Having lived hundreds of years already, Logan welcomes the idea of putting an end to his suffering but when Yashida unexpectedly offers to rid Logan of his eternal nature, Logan begins to realize that his gift might be worth keeping after all. Let’s just say that things don’t quite go that way and things aim towards the Spiderman 2 route where old Peter Parker stops being so adept at wall climbing.

Stripped of his powers and forced to experience life as an everyman, this is the story of the man behind the muttonchops, the bones beneath the metal-casings but that doesn’t mean there aren’t the requisite action sequences. Trust me, they’re there.

Instead of the building-smashing, chaotic entropy of recent superhero fare, the spectacles are honed in on traditional Japanese warfare – the art of the katana. Logan’s initial disregard for the time-honored Japanese sword later plays into the overarching themes of respect but, on a purely popcorn level, it makes for some great swordplay sequences. With a hierarchy that sets close quarters skills above gun blazing carnage, this is more of a samurai film than a superhero movie. Even the commercially succulent, bullet train-top sequence introduces the idea of stasis as victory – a riff on the old notion that the tortoise can beat the hare. In these regards, The Wolverine takes far more notes from The Last Samurai than The Dark Knight.

Even from a visual standpoint, The Wolverine doesn’t contain the bleak imagery of gritty affairs as Ross Emery frames everything in a splendor of picturesque Japanese vistas. In these choices, X-Men remains the boldest superhero franchise still breathing. Had Fox had the decency to stick by McQuarrie’s script – in which Wolverine was the only mutant, and axed Svetlana Khodchenkova‘s poison ivy-esque Viper, they would have really had something on their hands. But with blood on his claws, stumbling through a mob of broken English, Logan’s battle with the consequences of immortality is entirely watchable. Top that off with perhaps the best mid-credits scene in the history of credit scenes (one that actually is an important and meaningful scene, far superior to the weakening teasers from the Marvel camp) and you have a reason to go to the theaters this weekend.