Movie Review - X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

Starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schrieber, Danny Huston, Lynn Collins, and Will.i.Am
Directed by Gavin Hood
Written by David Benioff and Skip Woods

I really know very little about the X-Men comic book series. Yes, I saw the first two films, but I never saw the third. So, I went into this a little wet behind the ears in terms of my Wolverine knowledge. In the end, I don't think it really mattered. My lack of enjoyment in the film had nothing to do with the fact that I knew nothing about it going in...it had to do with the fact that it just wasn't a very good film.

The film opens in the 1860s with two horrible child actors discovering that the younger brother has a mutant power that allows him to push bones out of his hands and create "claw-life" appendages that he can impale people with (his brother has a similar power, to a lesser degree). Once the younger kid kills his father (for reasons I won't get into here), he and his older brother run away. Through a rather interesting credit sequence, we learn that the two brothers appear to be somewhat immortal as they have helped the United States on the battlefield in every war from the Civil War through Vietnam. The two brothers, Logan (Jackman) and Victor (Schrieber) are somewhat forced to join an elite group of other "mutants" who go around the world and try and help out the U.S. government. When Logan discovers that the group may not be on the up and up, he decides to leave rather than do harm to innocent people.

Living in Canada, Logan hoped to forget his mutant past, but he is soon called into duty by William Stryker (Huston), the head of Logan's former band of mutants. Apparently, someone is killing mutants and Stryker needs Logan's help. Logan refuses, but when it appears that his brother shows up in Canada and kills Logan's girlfriend, Logan agrees to allow Stryker to inject him with adamantium (a super-powerful metal) to make him a nearly invincible killing machine. Now deemed Wolverine, Logan sets out on a mission to stop the murderous streak of his brother (apparently now called Sabretooth...but I don't ever remember even hearing that name mentioned in the movie).

Yes, that's a long set-up...and if you thought it took forever reading it, it took infinitely longer watching it. Despite (as mentioned above) a promising credit sequence, the film itself falls flat often. Action sequences are repetitive (there was more than one time that Sabretooth pounced at Wolverine at the start of a fight scene) and somewhat unexciting. I'm all for ridiculous action, but there was nothing here that you wouldn't have seen in any other PG-13 action movie. In fact, there's really nothing here at all that's new. How many times have we seen a movie where, as some character is dying, they say, "I'm so cold." Really? Haven't we heard that line in hundreds of other films?

The actors, with the exception of a surprisingly engaging Liev Schreiber, were either over-the-top (I'm calling out Danny Huston here) or incredibly low-key (Jackman, that'd be you). And Wolvie's love interest played by (unknown to me) Lynn Collins was so generic, I wanted to shake some life into her.

Honestly, the flick wasn't godawful, but it wasn't even remotely good. I wasn't bored, but that could entirely be because it's the first "summer" action pic of the year.

The RyMickey Rating: D+