X-Men Origins: Wolverine

At one point in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a character is killed and told by his vanquisher, "You are so predictable." That's my chief complaint about this film--it's a by-the-numbers superhero film that offers very little sizzle or flair. And that's a shame, because I like the character and how Hugh Jackman, now in his fourth go-round, has successfully made Wolverine a compelling figure. It's perhaps the best marriage of performer to character in all of the Marvel films.

But alas, Jackmancan not save this thing. I find it interesting that Gavin Hood was chosen to make the film. He has drifted far from his art-house origins. There's no trace of the ingenuity he brought to his film Tsotsi. After making a fair-to-middlin' Hollywood film, Rendition, he's now reduced to churning out standard-issue greasy kid stuff. They could have done just as well to bring back a hack like Brett Ratner, who certainly would have been more comfortable dishing out the cliches, including two of my least favorites: the character cradling a dead loved one, looking to the heavens and screaming, with the camera directly overhead; and the character calmly walking away from an explosion.

If the title doesn't clue you in, what we have here is Wolverine's origin. We learn that he was born in Canada in the early 1800s and discovers he has claws when there's some sort of family dispute (perhaps this is spelled out in the comic books, because it sure gets short shrift here). He learns that his brother, Victor, is also a mutant, who also has some gnarly claws, and the two can't be killed and don't age. During the prologue they fight in several wars (somewhere along the line they've moved to the States). What they do during peacetime is not specified.

After Vietnam, they are recruited for a special unit run by Stryker (Danny Huston). Jackman has had enough of the bloodshed, and turns to a simple life of lumberjacking and living with a hot schoolteacher (Lynn Collins). His situation is so idyllic that we know it will end tragically.
There are a lot of extra characters, some of whom were X-Men, in this film. I faithfully read Marvel Comics for twenty years and I had trouble sorting out who was who. In some instances they scraped the bottom of the barrel (The Blob?) and also briefly feature some more prominent characters, like Gambit, Deadpool and Emma Frost. Victor (played well by Liev Schreiber) is of course Sabretooth, although he is never addressed by that name in this film (perhaps to avoid the problem that Sabretooth was a character in the first X-Men film, without the baggage of him being Wolverine's brother). This is probably the only comic-book film I've ever seen that needs annotation. Many of these characters have powers that are never fully defined: if Gambit is a mutant, what's with the magic stick? How is John Wraith different than Nightcrawler?

The action scenes are nothing to write home about. Wolverine and Sabretooth square off several times, and each time is about the same. There are long stretches where nothing seems to be happening, yet the film isn't that long, by comic-book standards. The music score is wretchedly bombastic.

The film does tie-in nicely with the beginning of the first X-Men film, as Patrick Stewart makes a cameo (although he appears to be doing it against his will). Since Jackman was one of the producers of this film it's pretty clear he's not tired of wearing those funky whiskers, but I don't know what the future of Wolverine could be, without making another full-blown X-Men film. Maybe by then we'll see the New Mutants. Casting ideas for Cannonball, anyone?