Casual X-Men fans will probably be surprised by this storyline for our claw-handed friend, but for serious Wolverine aficionados, this plot is a good one—when the Logan/Wolverine (Hugh Jackman, of “Les Misérables,” “Rise of the Guardians,” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) travels to Japan, cavorts with ninjas, falls in love with someone who isn’t Jean Grey, and basically proves that his awesomeness isn’t confined only by the Atlantic (for more examples of this theme, see this summer’s undervalued “Pacific Rim”). And yet, not everything is true to the source material—some characters’ parents are changed, a main villain doesn’t have any of the glimmers of goodness suggested in the comics, etc.—and the film has weird script issues make it seem somewhat unfinished.
Those script problems mainly manifest in the film’s three female characters: Logan’s love interest Mariko (Tao Okamoto), his self-proclaimed bodyguard Yukio (Rila Fukushima), and his nemesis Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova, of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”). Each of them has some weirdness going on: Yukio disappears for a long stretch toward the end, when she would be most needed. Mariko is hinted at being a mutant, but that thread is never picked up. And ultimately, although this film has three women in important supporting roles, Mariko and Yukio just go from following one male to following Logan, and Viper’s sole purpose is fighting him. Much like in this summer’s “Man of Steel” and “Star Trek Into Darkness,” the women are here—they just don’t have any identities outside of how they relate to our male hero.
But let me put my feminism aside for a bit, because it’s not like “The Wolverine” is awful. It begins in World War II, when prisoner-of-war Logan saved a Japanese soldier from dying after an atomic blast; decades later, Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), now an old man and the leader of a gigantic tech company, summons Logan to his dying bedside. He knows Logan is tormented by his healing powers and inability to die, and he wants those qualities for himself—so Logan can join his dead love, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, of “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” and “Taken 2”), while Yashida continues running his company. More life is what Yashida is asking for, if Logan is willing to give it.
Yet Logan, although he’s been plagued by dreams of Jean Grey beckoning him to death so he can be with her, refuses. Yashida’s adopted granddaughter Yukio and his biological granddaughter Mariko are both crushed, especially when Yashida dies later in the night, and there’s a resentment running through Yashida’s funeral the next day, which is also attended by Yashida’s son and Mariko’s father Shingen (Hiroyuki Sanada), Mariko’s arranged-marriage fiancé Noburo (Brian Tee), and her ex-boyfriend Harada (Will Yun Lee, of “Red Dawn” and “Total Recall”). Everyone’s nursing their own ambitions—Shingen wants the family company, Noburo wants more political power, and Harada wants to do his group of ninjas, the Black Clan, proud—but when Mariko is kidnapped, not that many people are jumping to her aid. It’s really only Logan who decides to protect her, but when he seems stripped of his healing powers, something that used to be profoundly easy for him is now an immeasurable challenge—one that might finally get him killed.
Practically every superhero movie is an identity crisis for its protagonist, isn’t it? But what’s different here is that thanks to other X-Men movies, we’re used to a loner Logan, a kind of rogue character who doesn’t want to take part in anything organized at all; in “The Wolverine,” we get that individual forced to care about others and to consider his own life, too, a change for a character we think we already know everything about. And Jackman is game for that transformation: There’s something quite achingly sad in his interactions with Jean Grey, who he was forced to kill in “X-Men 3: The Last Stand” but still loves, and his crotchety older brother routine with Yukio works well. Similarly, Fukushima is quite fierce as his red-headed protector, a mutant who can see the deaths of everyone she knows—she holds her own especially well with a katana—but we’re expected to believe her switching of sympathies from her adopted family to the Wolverine too rapidly. The same problem plagues Mariko, who goes from calling Logan a “caveman” to, barely a day later, falling into his arms. It all feels strangely rushed.
But the action scenes are good—Yun Lee is fantastic with his bow and arrow, and Harada is a criminally underused character; highlights overall include a fight on top of a moving bullet train and a ninja takeover of the Yashida home—and there are some interesting questions raised here about courage, immortality, and honor. It’s just disappointing that the film practically sole attention to its male hero at the expense of the female and minority characters included to give this film its very purposeful Japanese feel. “The Wolverine” is somewhat successful, then, but simultaneously upsettingly blasé about the very culture it’s supposed to honor.
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