CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Dan Baker on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on March 21st, 2024, reviewing the new streaming series “Manhunt” – based on the bestseller by James L. Swanson – currently streaming on Apple TV+.
Film Review: Audacious ‘The Wolverine’ Also a Bit Excessive
CHICAGO – Following the release of “Iron Man 3” and “Man of Steel,” “The Wolverine” is the best of the bunch, simply by following “The Dark Knight” and the Marvel Comics formula, creating a conflicted superhero who cannot conform to any conventional definition of heroism.
Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
But also like those aforementioned Summer of 2013 films, “The Wolverine” suffers from an overblown conclusion that based on other points of the narrative could have been avoided. It’s the story in this Wolverine saga that is the most intriguing of the super movies, not having to explain any origin of the man, yet still giving him enough angst to anticipate a savory redemption. The Asian angle was also a brilliant stroke – the film takes place in Japan – and includes an amazing flashback to the atomic bomb hit of Nagasaki during World War 2. This is grand entertainment in this genre, and almost – almost! – got through the whole story without resorting to special effect pyrotechnics. That is saved for the end, and although it’s intense, the massive size and excessive length wasn’t in proportion to the rest of the film.
Set after the events in the film “X-Men: The Last Stand,” Logan (Hugh Jackman) – also known as the sharp-clawed immortal mutant Wolverine – is having a life crisis. His lover Jean (Famke Janssen, in flashbacks) is dead, and he has taken himself out of circulation by living in the woods. An errant hunting incident forces him into the nearby town, and he is confronted with his past in the form of a visitor from Japan named Yukio (Rila Fukushima), an adopted granddaughter of Logan’s old World War 2 companion, Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi).
Yukio is assigned with bringing Logan to Yashida’s deathbed in Japan, to say his goodbyes. This starts a chain of events that involves the dreaded Yakuza crime syndicate, who has price on the dying man’s family. The natural granddaughter of the clan, Mariko (Tao Okamoto) is primed to take over the vast industrial empire of Yashida, in conflict with her father (Hiroyuki Sanada). The Wolverine is pulled into the ever escalating circumstance, while the crime syndicate has their own mutant power in pursuit, the Viper (Svetlana Khodchenkova).
Photo credit: 20th Century Fox |