‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’ review

(In theaters now – released 05/01/2009)

Reprising his role as the hot headed and short tempered mutant: Wolverine, is Hugh Jackman. Though, after seeing this dismal feature, it’s hard to tell why he chose to do so despite the success of the X-Men franchise.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine is nothing more than a revenge story with a less than moderate story line, a poorly written screenplay and second rate special effects that somehow are able to take away from a movie that had very little to offer in the first place.

So, where to begin…Well let’s start with the screenplay. Written by the accomplished screenwriter David Benioff (25th Hour, Stay and The Kite Runner) and the lesser known Skip Woods (Swordfish and Hitman). With these two writers, I guess you could say that Wolverine had started off on the right path. 25th Hour is a tremendous film and a lot of the film’s success goes out to  Benioff’s great screenplay. However, despite past successes, Benioff and Woods seemed to simply shit all over 120 pages of screenplay and said, “Let’s call this X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Cliche, cliche, cliche…etc.  When somebody’s dying and they blurt out, “I feel cold,” it’s a pretty good indication that your script blows. That line nearly had me rolling out of my chair.  I had to have laughed for a good 5 minutes….I have a witness! (Sonny).  Not to mention, just minutes before Silverfox’s stupendous dying comment, she tries to be a badass by saying, “Walk until your feet bleed….then walk some more.”  Are you fucking kidding me?!  Oh, let us not forget the great William Stryker comment about the adamantium bullets…”These won’t kill Wolverine, but they’ll kill his memories.” That was a humdinger!

As a story, Wolvey felt forced on me. From the opening scene when we meet two young brothers on the run, through the montage of the two of them fighting in nearly every war in history (what happened between that).  Then we’re jolted forward to the present as Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) and Logan (Hugh Jackman) become members of some mutant team of assassins. Then some more stupid shit happens…..oh, then I got hit in the back of the head with a fucking skittle! Not cool.  Goddamn douchebags sitting in the top row. Anyway, Logan leaves the team after he disagrees with battle tactics and the teams merciless killings of innocent towns people.  After that, we’re forced into a romantic relationship between Logan and some broad who we’ll later learn to be Silverfox.

Now onto the special effects dept.  Overall, the were simply horrible.  From the sequence of Victor Creed’s orangutan like display through hallways,  to the action sequence involving the helicopter…stupid. The last scene were brothers reunite to due battle with Deadpool….who looked ridiculously like something out of Mortal Kombat, which was also a horrendous film.  Finally, something as little as Wolverine’s claws looked flat out fake.  Kudos to the Special Effects team.  I’m sure you’ll get another job sometime soon.  Be thankful the film made money, or you’d be looking for one.

Gavin Hood is in on a tailspin.  From his “force to be reckoned with” film Tsotsi, he established himself as an up and coming filmmaker.  But now with two very bad films in a row with Rendition and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, he too may be looking for a job very soon as well.

WHACKED!

IMDb – 6.9/10

Rottentomatoes – 36% (Paul you owe Mike some beer!)

MovieWiseGuys – 4.0/10