Marvel takes the Wolverine story to the next level with a dark and brooding addition to the action franchise.
Wolverine has gone off grid. After years fighting megalomaniac mutants with the X-Men he's had enough of losing loved ones and has gone feral in the Canadian Rockies. So when Japanese beauty Yukio (Rila Fukushima) invites him to The Land of the Rising Sun to say goodbye to an old friend, the modified muscleman travels to Asia to find electronics billionaire Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi) offering him mortality in exchange for his power. It's a bargain that Logan is not likely to take, but the blade-wielding warrior has no time to think before an army of Yakuza gangsters target Yashida's heiress granddaughter (Tao Okamoto) and he's called upon to protect her. Now he will have to learn the ways of the samurai on the hop... and perhaps find peace with his power and his pain at the same time.
In a nod to the de rigueur practice of deconstructing our best-loved heroes, The Wolverine follows Bond and Batman with an action blockbuster peppered with soul-searching and reflection. This is no small risk given Logan's penchant for slicing and dicing first, asking questions later, but Hugh Jackman is an old pro when it comes to his claw-handed alter ego and he makes a fine job of putting flesh on Logan's grief-stricken motivations here.
Based on a 1980s comic book storyline from Frank Miller and Chris Claremont, the film has all the action any X-Men fan could wish for, plus enough character rumination to make even the hardest superhero seem human.
The Wolverine is a Film programme that first aired in 2013 and has been classified a 12 certificate.
