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Created Jul 26, 2013 05:35PM PST • Edited May 14, 2014 09:00PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   The title sucks, but the movie rocks. Rox tops sux. How does it rock? Let us count the ways.

   1. Marvel spins well-wrought yarns, with superheroes defined by their foibles as much as their powers. Wolverine has love-lost and anger issues. At some level, who doesn’t?
   2. Nice that he’s facing-off mortal enemies for the fate of something less than the whole world. IOW, the antagonists and the reason they’re fighting are only at an 8 on a scale of 10, whereas superhero movies typically are turned up to 11. Nice restraint, that.
   3. Hugh Jackman’s a big time moviestar operating at full action-hero amperage, which is to say 11 on a scale of 10. Good name Mr. Australia’s got, since he’s a man jacked up to 11.
   4. Wolverine is one of my least fave Marvel characters, and yet Marvel movies are rarely less than great. Thus it shouldn’t be a surprise that they’ve done it again.
   5. Set mostly in Japan, The Wolverine gains power from the homeland of the Ronin.

   Now for one disappointment: No Stan Lee cameo. I want my Stan Lee cameo! I want it!!

   Word to the wise: Sit through the credits, as Marvel fans knows to do. Two old friends appear.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Hugh Jackman’s got man-cleavage damn near up to his Adam’s apple. The dude’s boffo buff. That, a perpetual scowl and boffo buff acting chops make him an outstanding Logan / Wolverine.

   The rest of the cast are not so outstanding, other than Rila Fukushima.

   First the Japanese players. Gaijin disclosure: I may not be culturally attuned to them.

   • Rila Fukushima is great as a cutie bodyguard with a lethally pretty pout. She’s hot.
   • Tao Okamoto is underwhelming as an heiress with severe Daddy issues.
   • Hiroyuki Sanada plays her severely addled Daddy.
   • Hal Yamanouchi as an industrialist with a God complex. Ken Yamamura plays his younger incarnation during WWII.
   • Brian Tee as a corrupt government minister.
   • Will Yun Lee as a spurned lover with a cross-bow

   Two Western actresses also fail to jump off-screen.

   • Svetlana Khodchenkova as a blonde femme-fatale.
   • Famke Janssen as the ghost of a former lover.

5. Male Stars Really Great 4.5

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

   Rila Fukushima is great, the others not so much.

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Marvel, yes. Stan Lee, no.¹ Guess that’s why I never warmed to Wolverine. Marvel doesn’t disappoint however and this chapter of their canon shows why: superheroes with issues to which we mortals can relate, deft use of epochal events like the bombing of Nagasaki, martial values and accomplished storytelling. With those qualities on display, it shouldn’t be a marvel that they never disappoint.

    ¹ Wolverine came to Marvel in the 80s. Thus the great Stan Lee, let alone Jack Kirby or the other stalwarts behind the Marvel stable, weren’t involved with the character.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    James Mangold unspools a film that is remarkably naturalistic for the first reel, and less supernaturally flamboyant than many superhero yarns thereafter. Give the man more such assignments!

12. Play Very Good 3.5

    All hail the creators of Wolverine for ignoring deeply ingrained memes about the Wolfman to create a new character that shares nothing more than a certain hirsuteness and moniker with Wolfmen of yore.

    That said, I would have graded the Play higher if the plot weren’t so oddly double-crossing.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Great 4.0

    High Points

    • The ground-zero recreation of the Nagasaki atomic bomb attack.
    • The pointillist hospital bed, presumably designed to avoid bed sores.

    I saw it in 3D, which was well done and nicely additive.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.3

    PG-13 Brutal violence, i.e., very little blood and no gore.

17. Sex Titillating 1.8

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.6

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Fantasy 4.1

24. Physical Supernatural 3.6