The word “mutant” is only mentioned a couple times, and The Wolverine is all the better for it. Hugh Jackman’s Logan is now a grizzled mountain-man, trying to forget about killing Famke Janssen. All that wild brooding is interrupted, though, when a wealthy businessman invites Wolverine back to Japan to offer a gift of de-immortalizing him (thanks?). Rila Fukushima is adorable, flipping around as Logan’s tiny bodyguard. While Svetlana Khodchenkova gets to vamp things up as venomous scientist Viper. Dialling down the superpower show-off, The Wolverine is slower and stranger than you might expect from an X-Men spinoff. That’s kind of its charm. It’s all needless, sure. But there’s a loopy finale featuring robots and a hell of a fight scene on top of a bullet train. There’s also Hugh Jackman eating soup and crying in the rain. Oddly, both work pretty well together.
This article appears in Jul 25-31, 2013.