Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 67% (Critics) / 81% (Audience)
Directed By: James Mangold
Written By: Mark Bomback and Scott Frank
Starring: Hugh Jackman, Tao Okamoto, Rila Fukushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Svetlana Khodchenkova and Famke Janssen
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Synopsis:Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine in this sequel to the member of the X-Men’s first solo outing. Mark Bomback and The Usual Suspects’ Christopher McQuarrie penned the script, which takes its inspiration from the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller Marvel miniseries from the 1980s dealing with the character’s adventures in Japan as he fights ninjas in the ceremonial garb of the samurai. Knight and Day’s James Mangold directs. (Source)
The Good:
Hugh Jackman is perfect as Wolverine and much the same way with Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, I have a hard time picturing anyone else playing the role any better. it is Jackman’s performance that did the most to keep me interested in this movie at all.
I also enjoyed Rila Fukushima as Yukio. She was plucky and very capable in her fight scenes. I hope she continues to be Logan’s sidekick and also gets the call to appear in the X-Men movies.
The after credits scene was great.
The Bad:
The romance between Logan and Mariko Yashida was awful with there being nearly zero chemistry between Jackman and Tao Okamoto.
The villains in this film were lackluster to say the least with Viper being the worst of the bunch. It was like someone dropped a bitchy villainess from a 90’s primetime soap opera into the middle of a super hero movie. The character of Hamada was unfocused and his motivations switched so many times and with such little reason that it made no sense.
Most of the action scenes were very pedestrian and uninspired with Wolverine just slashing away like a spas while getting shot/stabbed/kicked/punched/impaled…he may be the worst hero ever when it comes to fighting. And whoever thought it was a good idea to spend so much of the movie having Wolverine fight random henchman (and do so in such a sloppy way) needs to be slapped.
Also dead Jean Grey is just as big a buzzkill as she was when she was alive.
The Ugly:
I seriously doubt that anyone was shocked by the big reveal of who the Silver Samurai was…it was telegraphed so obviously from the start that a person who had only seen the trailers for the film could have made the right guess.
Final Verdict: THE WOLVERINE is not really a bad movie but it is definitely not a good one. Instead it is just there for 2 hours giving the audience nothing worthwhile to latch onto. I guess mediocre would be the word that best describes the movie. Things happen but none of them are particularly interesting or well done and at the end you feel nothing. The 5 minute after credit scene packed more of a punch than the entirety of THE WOLVERINE’s over 2 hour running time.
Rating: C
Crustula 
And here’s another one I don’t feel bad about missing until the HBO.
LikeLike
I wouldn’t blame you for waiting. While its better than the first one(and really it would ave to be because the first one was dreadful) it is just so depressingly average.
LikeLike
I think a lot of recent Superhero films have been lackluster. They all have the same style cookie-cutter plot now – where the superhero doesn’t want to be what he is anymore and questions his role in society. And they even put that aspect into the new SUPERMAN which is WRONG TO DO because Superman has always been the purest of superheros and and would never second guess himself. Even the AVENGERS wasn’t as good as the hype IMO, And I didn’t go see Iron Man 3 because it seems like the same film for a third time. (I will watch it when it comes to netflix or on demand.)
LikeLike
I always liked Superman stories that showed him to be less perfect which was just one of the reasons why I lie Man of Steel so much.
I do get what you are saying though…it’s like the folks behind these super hero movies all follow the same character progression script.
LikeLike
I actually quite liked it but the damn Viper and the FUCKING robot samurai?! Why?!
LikeLike
I swore they dubbed the woman playing the Viper because there were moments where her mouth and the words supposedly coming out of it did not match up at all.
And I would have preferred the comic book mutant Silver Samurai over the Iron Man armor in this movie.
LikeLike
Why couldn’t it have been just like the comics, does Fox have a problem with source material?
LikeLike
You would think they would stick closer to the comics since Fox hired comic writer Mark Millar to be the driving force behind their X-Universe movies.
LikeLike
Sadly I think he was hired after production on this film was nearly done so to see if he has any effect on the films we’ll have to wait to see Days of Futures past 😀
LikeLike