Dept. of Mutants I would normally wait for the DVD to see a Wolverine movie; the teen soap operas called the X-Men franchise, after the first one, leave me pretty cold. But James Mangold directs this current Hugh Jackman movie, and I liked Mangold’s last two, “3:10 to Yuma” (Russell Crowe/Christian Bale) and “Knight and Day” (Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz). They were about something more than the simple plot descriptions; in 3:10, Bale fears he is losing not only his self-respect, but the respect of his son. K&D (terrible title! It was originally supposed to be called Witchita) is about a guy who is able to help everyone out of a jam except himself. So I thought Mangold might shade the Logan character, who has witnessed the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the entire history of professional organized baseball without developing opinions or understanding about anything. Nope. Mangold does bring some you-are-in-the-middle-of things excitement to an early action segment, as he did the thrilling stagecoach heist that opened 3:10. And the many Japanese locations are a novelty. There’s some quirky casting in Logan’s Japanese “bodyguard.” But Logan is the same uninteresting cipher. There are ninjas everywhere doing flips for no apparent reason. (“It’s just the way we roll.”) There’s an evil blonde girl mutant wearing a green rubber outfit that is so ugly I’m surprised the actress didn’t go on strike. I hope any movie fan who hasn’t seen “Pacific Rim” will give it a chance. It’s the one summer blockbuster where I left the theater with a big smile. (Interesting coincidence: the monsters in Rim are called "kaiju," and I think I heard the word used once in Wolverine, too.)
Posted on: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:34:48 +0000
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