When Wolverine is lured to Japan, as he faces death prospect, he struggles to rediscover the hero within himself, he must grapple with powerful foes and the ghosts of his own haunted past.
Getting [Wolverine] to the movie's above-average finale required three writers - Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback, and Scott Frank - to pad the plot.
Too quickly the random fights pile up -- so many yakuza thugs who forgot to wear chain mail that morning -- and you yearn for the film that might have been.
It restores the tarnished lustre to this most fan-beloved of Marvel characters by doing precisely what Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's near-sacred 1982 run did: It pumps some feeling into the guy along with his muscles and steel talons.
Director James Mangold's film features some breathtakingly suspenseful action sequences, exquisite production and costume design and colorful characters, some of whom register more powerfully than others.
Wonky closing chapter aside, there's enough in The Wolverine that I find myself preferring it to all of the comic book pictures we've seen so far this year.
