The Wolverine - a movie review

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Summary: Are you kidding? If you only see one movie this summer, this is the one. (Well, except that Thor is coming out soon.) If you're a fan of the Wolverine, this is a must-see. If you aren't a fan of the Wolverine, but you love movies with action, this is a must-see. If you don't like movies with action, then go ahead and watch old I Love Lucy re-runs.

You don't even need to be the Wolverine's biggest fan. Spiderman is still my favorite of all the superheroes, and as far as the movies go, The Avengers is the most awesome movie made.
I am a fan of Wolverine, so I really looked forward to this movie. Let's face it, Hugh Jackman was born to be the Wolverine, and he's been awesome in all the previous incarnations. This is thirteen years down the road from when we first saw him in X-Men (2000). We then saw him pop up in the rest of the series as Wolverine (arguably the best character in the movies) X2 (2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), and X-Men: First Class (2011).
Jackman still looks built. For a guy who is forty-four years old, the man makes us all feel overweight and out of shape (which I am, but still...). He spends a lot of his time with his shirt ripped off. He's been working out with a trainer somewhere, and we should give the guy a medal or something. He certainly knows what he's doing.

Having said that, let's go back to the movie.
Jean Grey haunts Wolverine in this one, haunting us in the process.
We finally meet Mariko. I wanted the back-story of Mariko brought into the legacy of the movies, and this movie does it. I'm not sure it works the way I wanted it to work, but they did an overall good job with it.
We get to see the Silver Samurai. I'm not sure of the comic version of Silver Samurai story, but the movie makes me want to grab comics and read up on it. We also are introduced to Yukio and the Viper, both women I wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley if they were mad at me. I know nothing of the comic lore that goes with them, but the acting was good and made me want to learn more. The actress that played Yukio (Rila Fukushima) played the part perfectly. She had just enough to draw my attention when required, but not enough to pull me from the central story.
And there was a central story. This wasn't just a mish-mash of fights with some dialogue and a vague reason to have a movie. We actually see some of the angst Logan deals with as Wolverine.
There is one thing that bothered me: during the fight with the Silver Samurai Wolverine gets his adamantium claws hacked off with a huge adamantium sword. His metal claws seem gone forever. I don't like it, but I didn't like it when Magneto pulled all the adamantium from his skeleton in the comics either.

I won't say anything more. The movie has all the things you expect from The Wolverine – explosions, tons of fights, vicious enemies and a love story (sort of). I'll leave it at that, and say one simple thing.
Go see it. Now. Skip work. I give this an eight of ten, and I'll certainly buy the DVD when it comes out.


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