The Wolverine is loosely based on one of the finest stories in the X-Men canon, the Frank Miller-penned, John Byrne-illustrated Wolverine miniseries that kicked off the eventual monthly comic of the same name. While not the same watershed moment in graphical storytelling as Frank Miller/Lynn Varley's magnum opus, The Dark Knight Returns or Alan Moore/David Gibbon's Watchmen, it is one of the 80s best-told stories in comics. The movie is almost as good, very entertaining, and at times, even thought-provoking.
The Wolverine starts with Wolverine, or Logan, walking the Earth, trying to bring closure to the fact he had to kill a woman he dearly loved (Jean Gray, as seen in X-Men, The Last Stand). He is a homeless man in the North Country of Canada, scratching out a day-to-day existence in a cave. One day, while in town, a mysterious, magenta-haired Japanese woman finds him and asks him to accompany her to Tokyo, where a dying man Logan once saved wants to thank Logan for saving his life in WWII. Logan agrees and sees the man. Logan is a mutant with healing powers. His body can cope with any wound or poison, which makes him virtually indestructible and apparently, immortal as he can't die. The old man offers Logan a proposition, to take away his mutant power so he can eventually live a normal life, grow old and die. Logan is momentarily tempted, but refuses. After the man dies, he wills his company to his granddaughter Mariko, bypassing her father. This sets off a chain of events involving the Yakuza (the Japanese mob) and shadowy agents of Mariko's father's company to kill her. Logan saves her and protects her and they eventually fall in love. This leads to a climatic showdown at the end with the Silver Samurai, a huge robot made of the same unbreakable adamantium metal that Logan's bones and claws are made of.
The movie, for the most part, is an extended chase sequence, including a fantastic fight between Logan and a Yakuza man on top of a speeding bullet train. But, as with the best of most of the superhero movies that have come out over the past 10-20 years, there are deeper themes at work here. The best question in this movie is what if immortality is a curse, rather than a gift? If you could not die, if you had to outlive all you loved and knew, would you welcome everlasting life? It is also about being able to let go of the past so you can continue on into the future. The movie is an entertaining mishmash of Japanese gangster dramas, superhero films, and a more-than-usual mature love story. The only two negatives I have are the film appears to suffer from some post-production cutting and requires you to know a lot of backstory going in. While it is not a requirement that you see X-Men 1-3 and Wolverine: Origins, it does help or you may be a little lost. For those of us geeks who have seen them, it's a lot of fun, but others may be a bit confused. There are several references to earlier events that are not fully explained and will leave the uninitiated mostly in the dark. Also, there does appear to have been some post-production cutting, because some of the finer plot points don't make a lot of sense or are under-explained. Either way, I hope the DVD will have an extended release because this movie is very plot-heavy, a welcome change to many of the superhero movies as of late. Also, the Silver Samurai scene at the end, while exciting, has a feel that it was tacked on almost as an afterthought. Again, I hope the DVD delves into this more. Those are the only reasons I took some points off. Otherwise, it is taut, exciting and exotic. For some reason, some of the best Wolverine stories take place in Japan. The character lends itself well to the culture.
And by the way, stick around in the credits for the final stinger. The next X-story will be Days of Future Past, which, for those of you who read the X-Men comic, is arguably the second best story next to the Dark Phoenix saga (whose events were portrayed in X-Men 3, whose stinger will finally make sense when you see this film).
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