Matt’s review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
The beginnings of Wolverine are explored in “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” a tight, just-under-two-hours action thriller.
It takes pieces from the graphic novels “Wolverine Origin” and “Weapon X,” but the heart of the film is the Wolverine-Sabretooth relationship.
Hugh Jackman returns as Wolverine, who starts the film as a sickly young boy named James Howlett. A family dispute leaves him fatherless and homeless, and his only companion is another youngster, the violent and dangerous Victor Creed. James’ life through the ages as a hard-bitten fighter and warrior, with Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber), aka Sabretooth at his side, is shown as the film opens. Eventually, Victor’s sadistic and violent proclivities get the pair in trouble. However, their unusual talents are of special interest to Col. William Stryker (Danny Huston), who recruits them for a special mutant task force.
This black ops task force doesn’t always have the best interests of the innocent in mind, and James eventually tires of the killing, leaving Victor alone for perhaps the first time ever. James retires to Canada, where he’s known as Logan and works as a lumberjack. He’s seemingly at peace for the first time. But his past can’t leave him alone. It haunts his dreams — and eventually it returns in his waking life, as well.
When it appears someone is hunting down his old task force comrades, Logan agrees to have a possibly fatal procedure performed, melding the unbreakable metal adamantium to his bones and claws. But, he discovers, not all is as it seems, and his enemies may not be who he thought they were.
The final quarter of the film, where Wolverine seeks to put and end to an mutant experimentation project, drags a little and doesn’t entirely make sense. But until then, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” is a sleek superhero action film. The cool Cajun mutant Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) seems a likely spinoff star, as does Ryan Reynolds’ Wade Wilson, a member of the black ops squad.
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