SUMlHHHOlHHHHlt X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE (15) 97min 0..
Much like Han Solo in the original Star Wars trilogy, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine provided the vital tough-guy ingredient in the popular X-Men movies. Laconic and individualistic, the appealing Wolverine stood head and shoulders above the rest of his spandex-clad superhero team, with comic-book creators Marvel inevitably providing him with this spin-off vehicle to further stretch his claws.
Proficiently directed by Gavin Hood, an Oscar-winner with his South African drama Tsotsi, X-Men Origins: Wolverine explores a politically correct back-story for Jackman’s mutant, who sports a concealed exo- skeleton which provides him with not only a formidable physique, but also a pair of retractable and highly lethal metal claws. After a prologue set in the 18505, Hood's credit sequence features Logan (Jackman) and his brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) blazing a Highlander-style trail through several generations of conventional warfare, including the American Civil War, the Normandy landings and Vietnam, only to part company in disgust after a bloody massacre in an African village.
This elaborate sequence sympathetically explains our
48 THE LIST its an Apt “Snow
hirsute hero's reluctance to fight by positioning Logan/Wolverine as the bleeding-heart conscience of America at war, putting him at odds not only with his headstrong brother, but also with US army honcho William Stryker (Danny Huston) and the Mutant X special-ops programme that seeks to harness their powers. David Benioff’s script cannily engineers the deaths of Logan’s allies at regular intervals, ensuring our hero is motivated less by patriotism than by old- fashioned revenge, dished out through helicopter action in the Canadian Rockies, a Bourbon Street fight, and a final face-off among the irradiating ruins of Three Mile Island.
Devotees of the mythology featured in the X-Men comic strip and film may well take issue with the piecemeal treatment Hood and Benioff offer to minor characters such as Gambit (Taylor Kitch) and Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), but the focus here is firmly on Wolverine, with Jackman playing down his usual camp charms in favour of a cigar-chomping sneer that wouldn’t disgrace Clint Eastwood. Despite its unwieldy title, X-Men Origins: Wolverine transcends its origins to provide the kind of confidently handled action- blockbuster that gives mindless Hollywood entertainment a good name. (Eddie Harrison)
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DRAMA GOOD (15) 96min 0..
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errng CP Taylor's table of moral cowardice and subtle corruption .vrth [)ennrs Potterrroh ahsnrtlrty (Joltrng Intrusion of ttreatrreal lighting. perrori songs. ensernhle performances et<,;. Austrian Bra/than trlrnrnaker Vineente Arnorrrn does his best to find a (,‘rnernatrr, looting for what rs a (leerrledly theatrical experience Grappling wrth a dearly rrleagre turrlget and sereenwrrter John Wrathall's annoyrngl, satrerrratrr,‘ additions to the pla/, Arnonrrr struggles to rnarntarn rnornentorn or Interest. hut (Soot! still has plenty to recommend rt. lhe gifted Mortensen is ahly matched scene for scene h; Jason Issac?~ (best known for playing Lonny, Maltoy til the Harry Potter trlrnst as Ha‘rler‘s angry and compromised JeWIsh friend Maurice Brit trlrrr staple Stexe Mackintosh also goes sorrze ot hrs best work to (late as an unhrnged