Hugh Jackman knows when he puts on the old mutton chops that he is onto a winner! (X-Men Origins: Wolverine (DVD))

Member Name: nextgen

Product:	X-Men Origins: Wolverine (DVD)
Date:	30/10/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good performance from Hugh Jackman; Opening scences are exciting.

Disadvantages: Predictable; Apperances are too fleeting.

Hugh Jackman knows when he puts on the mutton chops that he is onto a winner! He's back again as the Gillette razor clawed Wolverine!

Let's get one thing straight, this is better than X3: The Last Stand. Watching a rottweiler snip at your genitalia is a less gruelling experience. Not to say that Wolverine is a good film because If you enjoyed Bryan Singer's one, two masterclass in comic book movie-making (X-Men 1 and X-Men 2), then you'll feel slightly disappointed with this latest mutant offering.

This is the full origin story; we see him as a bone-clawed child, then we see him taken through every war before joining a crime fighting mutant group in Africa. These early scenes are the movie most enjoyable, a miniature team of X-Men raiding a base and using all their powers is exciting and exactly the type of dynamic a film like this needs. The bunch of mutants features a decent who's who as well. Dominic Monaghan is great but all too brief in his appearance. Ryan Reynolds notches another superhero movie on his bedpost and makes a good wise-cracking Deadpool and there's Will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame.

The team is lead by a young Striker (Danny Houston) whom you know from X2 as Weapon X leader, well now he is a bit of a panto villain and one that looks like a young Gordon Brown, too. Joining him on the evil side of the fence is Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber), who was basically an nasty, aggressive version of Chewbacca in the first X-Men, now he shaven down and possessing the ability to string sentences together!

This film is called Wolverine, though, and any team angle is soon dropped to follow the hardest man in a vest since John McClane. As good as Jackman is, the movie need to explain the events that lead to X1 and 2 feels redundant, like a no frills greatest hits collection. Origins tells us how Logan get his leather jacket (really!), bike, claws, memory erased, bouffant, (okay I'm joking about that one!) etc.

When it isn't concerned with doing this, it's packing in the mutant cameos. Cyclops, Prof. X, Blob and comics fan favourite Gambit all pop in for fleeting apperances.

Taking a breif moment to discuss Gambit, on any level of it's hard for me to fathom the casting of the role. Being a 34-year-old virgin, comics and animation fan! From what I remember of the guy, he was a slick rogue with an edge. Not a blank-faced Gossip Girl extra with as much charisma as a sprouts. Okay temporary comic geek moment over!

The film is an average romp, having none of the atmosphere of Singer's films but, thankfully, not being the turkey of X3. Jackman wears the role like a glove but the script and ideas are unfocused and what could have been a dark and distinctive comic book film ends up repeating much of what has come before.

Summary: The film is an average romp, not as good as Singer's first two films but not the turkey that's X3.