‘The Wolverine’: It’s claws against ninja blades, without losing the human touch
July 26, 2013
The Wolverine onscreen always was the most intriguing of the X-Men lot. As an enigmatic outsider with a tortured past and taciturn persona he had character and depth, something few of the skimpily sketched circus anomalies in Professor Xavier’s menagerie could offer. If you draped a poncho across his back and put a six-shooter in his hand he’d not be unlike a young Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy. And now that I come to think of it, the man who plays Logan (a.k.a the Wolverine), Hugh Jackman, and Eastwood, thought of at a similar age, look and sound somewhat alike. I’m not sure if their politics or tastes in furniture are akin, but that’s beside the point.
Given the “cool” factor, it’s no surprise that the immortal mutant with a metal-reinforced skeleton and rapier-sharp retractable blades in his wrists got his own franchise. The first installment, “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” didn’t exactly wow, but backstory up ’til “last we left off” tends to do that. Here in “The Wolverine” we’re post the last X-Men chapter (”X-Men: The Last Stand”) and Logan is living (and looking) like a vagrant in the Yukon and depressed about the death of his beloved Jean Grey (Famke Janssen, who comes to him in dream sequences). He’s got a grizzly bear as neighbor, but before we get to all that, there’s the important rewind back to Nagasaki during World War II when Logan saves one of his captors from “the bomb.” That benefactor went on to become a wealthy industrialist and now, on his deathbed, would like Logan to pay him one final visit. Continue reading
And while the arc, ambiance and elements of the films bear many similarities, the context and articulation could not be further apart. Mads Mikkelsen, whom most U.S. viewers know as Hannibal Lecter in the self-titled NBC TV series or the European badass who bashed in Bond’s balls in “Casino Royale,” plays Lucas, a quiet man trying to gain some degree of custody of his teen son in the aftermath of a bitter divorce. 
In “Drive,” the story was rooted with a true antihero who comes to the aid of the hapless family next door, a simple setup that played out in the darkest recesses of the black and white spectrum. Here, though, there’s not a true right and just corner. Those who seemingly mete out justice by disemboweling others later prove to be morally ambiguous and perhaps even the face of evil. 
Del Toro has always been an intricate craftsman. The signs were evident in his quirky first outing, “Cronos” and best showcased in his Spanish Civil War-era films “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Devil’s Backbone.” His ventures into larger, more mainstream projects such as “Mimic” never took flight or, like “Hellboy” and its sequel, never forged an audience the way less articulate hero fare such as “The Avengers” have – truly the audience’s loss. But here the Mexican-born auteur with a penchant for horror and sci-fi seems eager to show prospective converts that he belongs, and he takes his shot in a very big way. 
The surprise here is Steve Carell, who plays against his usual big-screen persona as a feckless nice guy and is more like his irritable jerkwater boss on the NBC series “The Office.” His Trent, a middle-aged divorcee, decides to bring his new girlfriend Pam (Toni Collette) down to his summer house on the shore of some idyllic and fictional Massachusetts beach town. (“The Way, Way Back” was filmed in Wareham, Onset and Marshfield.) In tow are Trent’s diva daughter (Zoe Levin) and Pam’s introverted son, Duncan (Liam James). “The Brady Bunch” this is not.
The premise behind “The Heat,” which was shot in in our glorious city of Boston, though it doesn’t look so much like the Boston you and I know, is pretty much the same old comedic cop buddy story popularized by Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in “48 Hrs.,” and later, Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the “Lethal Weapon” series, except here, the oddball pairing is women and the focus is more on the funny than the dark and grim, though people do get shot in the head enough and blood does spurt. 
For What it's Worth 