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X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Sony, 2009)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is better than it has any right to be. That doesn't actually make it an good movie, mind you. It's still loaded with painful clichés and pointless superteam beauty shots, plot holes you can drive Charles Xavier's SR-71 through, and some painfully terrible greenscreen sequences. All that being said, if you go in with the right frame of mind, it's actually surprisingly enjoyable. Bear mind that "the right frame of mind" does not include "expecting to see note-perfect X-Men continuity onscreen." For one thing, it's a movie and needs to be written as one, not as a recitation of Chris Claremont's greatest hairychested Canadian hits. For another, at this point Wolverine's personal timeline is so thoroughly Eschered back on itself that "definitive continuity" is pretty much an oxymoron. If, however, you go in expecting a goofy superpowered romp with some nice performances by the leads, most notably a sardonic Liev Schrieber as Wolvie's half-brother Sabretooth, then you're in for a good time. Throw in a typically glowering performance from Hugh Jackman as the title character and a fun supporting turn from Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, and you've got the makings of some lively superheroic banter amidst the SFX shots. Lean back and enjoy those, along with the surprisingly brutal fight scenes -- there's a whole lot of "claws going through portions of anatomy" when Wolvie and Sabretooth throw down -- and the film's other sins can be forgiven. The title says it all when it comes to the plot: it's an origin story. More to the point, it's an origin story for an audience that knows where things are going, so the film doesn't get cute with revelations about who's related to who, or how. It's set up early on that Victor/Sabretooth and Logan/Wolverine are functionally immortal half-brothers who need to look out for each other in a very Sam/Dean Winchester way, and the extended credits sequence that follows that setup is one of the highlights of the film. Tracing the brothers through war after war after war (starting with the one where blue and gray were the preferred uniform colors), it shows their growing separation and Sabretooth's growing detachment from humanity, as well as the depths of their fraternal bond. Eventually, in Vietnam, Sabretooth finally snaps, starting a sequence of events that sends the two to work for the maniacal Col. Stryker, played by Danny Huston somewhere in the middle ground between Grosse Pointe Blank-era Dan Ackroyd and mid-period Richard Nixon. Stryker, it seems, is putting together a super-powered special ops unit that's doing some very naughty things -- one mutant at a time, in best ninja movie fashion -- and he wants the brothers on board. While Sabretooth revels in it, Logan walks out in a scene full of heroic stances and manfully clichéd dialog. Where it goes from there is fairly predictable, as Wolverine has what can only be described as a Highlander phase living in rustic splendor with his schoolteacher sweetheart, Kayla Silverfox. But like the Kurgan, Sabretooth shows up to cause trouble, and things get very messy indeed. The further one gets into the move, the more cursory the plot gets, until the final infiltration of Stryker's hidden base is reduced to a mere handwave. Everyone's always exactly where they need to be to make dramatic entrances into fights, the logic gets increasingly frayed -- I would suggest that Col. Stryker seriously consider giving his adamantium bullets to his trained sniper next time, for one thing -- and the morality gets increasingly broad and at odds with the action. If you want to nitpick or roll your eyes, you'll certainly have a lot to choose from. And yet, there are some wonderful moments. The sequence in the gym where we see Fred Dukes turning into the Blob is a guilty pleasure. The claw-related slapstick in the bathroom of the elderly couple that takes Wolverine in after his experimental surgery is a delight. And then there are those fight scenes, which really do carry the weight of more-than-human foes coming together to brutalize one another. Ultimately, there are two ways to take Wolverine. Enjoy it for what it is, or be disappointed by what it isn't. There's certainly enough to support either approach. For my part, I preferred the former, particularly since doing so allowed to wash the taste of the execrable X-Men 3 out of my mouth. Is it perfect, or even good? Not particularly, but it can be fun, and on at least one level, that's enough.
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