Honest to goodness it’s been a while since I saw an entertaining movie on the big screen and the last ones that I thoroughly enjoyed were way back in 2007 with the Transformers and in 2008 The Dark Knight both of which were a blast and a must see in fact. Even as I’m writing this I’m eagerly awaiting to catch up on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
Anyways getting back to X-Men Origins: Wolverine it’s a fun ride and one that you don’t want to get off just yet. The story is simple and to the point, the action is fast and furious, and the special effects and the sound effects simply awesome. In fact I will be queuing this one on Blu-Ray for the personal home theater collection and yes I do have all 3 parts of the original X-Men trilogy on DVD. The story begins a couple of centuries ago but yet again fails to explain the origin of Wolverine or of his elder brother Victor Creed played by Liev Schreiber. The movie just jump starts to where the brothers are both young men and young Wolverine discovers his claws trick for the very first time and accidentally ends up killing his biological father. The only difference is that bones grow out of his knuckles and not the indestructible metal alloy that we have come to see in the X-Men trilogy. The movie yet again fails to explain how Logan/Wolverine became a mutant or got his superpowers. Very obviously this movie deals with how Hugh Jackman (Logan) ends up as Wolverine with indestructible metal alloy woven into him and of course there is also a younger Stryker (Danny Huston) who molds and creates the Wolverine we know. As the titles roll in we see Liev Schreiber and Hugh Jackman fight “all the wars” i.e. World War 1, World War 2, all the civil wars, and well into Vietnam where Liev Schreiber loses it and ends up killing and plundering the Vietnamese and even ends up killing his superior who stands in his way. Both the brothers face the firing squad but despite a hail of bullets being dumped on them they survive. They are then rescued from their military jail cell by Danny Huston who recruits them to fight for America as special soldiers in an elite squad of fighting men with superpowers (all of them mutants) and also special privileges. Danny Huston is working on a top secret military project Weapon X where he wants to create a next generation super soldier combining mutant powers, but this involves killing other mutants and innocent people and this is something Hugh Jackman cannot agree with and so he ends up leaving.
Years later Hugh Jackman is leading a quiet life working as a lumberjack and living the good life with his schoolteacher girlfriend Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins). However, this peace is shattered by the arrival of Danny Huston who wants to recruit Hugh Jackman yet again for government service and especially to protect other mutants because Liev Schreiber has gone AWOL and is hunting down and killing off the mutant team members from their previous special ops team in the army. Hugh Jackman turns him down but Liev Schreiber does come looking for him and ends up killing Hugh Jackman’s girlfriend Lynn Collins. Hugh Jackman goes for revenge but cannot defeat his more powerful brother Liev Schreiber and hence agrees to join Danny Huston so that he can be equipped with indestructible metal alloy woven into him which will give him the weapon to defeat and kill Liev Schreiber. After the metal alloy is woven into him Hugh Jackman comes to know he was setup and all of this was a ploy to get him to cooperate with the army in their development of a new Weapon X and that even his girlfriend Lynn Collins is a mutant and all are working for Danny Huston and the army. The rest of the movie deals with how Hugh Jackman gets his revenge and also the story explains how he ends up losing his memory which is quite evident in the X-Men trilogy.
Performance wise Hugh Jackman is excellent yet again. He has practically made the Wolverine character his own and it’s going to be very difficult to imagine anybody else as Wolverine. Well I suppose a decade of playing Wolverine will do that to anyone seeing the original X-Men came out way back in the year 2000. Liev Schreiber is equally good as Victor Creed the evil brother of Hugh Jackman. He is both menacing and terrifying. Of course we do miss Patrick Stewart (who does put in a cameo at the very end), Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin and the very beautiful Rebecca Romijn from the original X-Men trilogy. The rest of the cast deliver what is expected of them. Ryan Reynolds plays Wade Wilson wielding a samurai sword in a cameo, and Will.i.am (from The Black Eyed Peas) plays John Wraith, but that’s about it. Go ahead and catch the movie, while it’s not particularly great, it’s still the best to have come out in recent times and that says a lot right?