Movie Review- X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Since this article prints after the movie’s May 1st premier I can say that without fear of being fired or sued. Since I obviously saw it in theaters the version I saw was complete. It was definitely not missing CG effects nor did it occasionally have dialog notes at the bottom of the screen. Now that we’ve cleared that up, the movie itself was good, a well paced, well acted action movie. Liev Schrieber plays Victor Creed, brother of James Logan. This is Hugh Jackman’s fourth feature as Logan so he has no trouble playing the brooding hero. Logan and Creed are both gifted with enhanced senses, reflexes and rapid healing. They each also have animalistic qualities, such as Creed’s claw-like nails and sharp canine teeth. The long-lived brothers fight through the American civil war and every major conflict after until Creed’s savageness on the battlefield warrants the brothers a firing squad in Vietnam. Their rapid healing ability saves their lives and draws the attention of para-government operative William Stryker. Stryker, played by Danny Huston, convinces the brothers to join his special team of mutant soldiers, played by Ryan Reynolds (Deadpool), Will.i.am (John Wraith), Kevin Durand (The Blob) and Dominic Monaghan (Bolt). Though Creed is comfortable with Stryker’s merciless tactics Logan leaves the program in pursuit of a nonviolent life. In other words, he pulls a Rambo. He becomes a Canadian lumberjack and falls in love with local schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox, played by Lynn Collins. Inevitably Stryker tricks Logan into returning to the program in order to have adamantium, an unbreakable alloy, grafted to every bone in his body including his retractable bone claws. Logan- now calling himself Wolverine- sets out to track down his brother whom he thinks killed his lover Silverfox. Many plot turns and fight sequences later we discover Logan has been a pawn in Stryker’s plan to create a supersoldier mutant to exterminate other mutants. The climactic final fight ends with a nuclear reactor in ruin and Logan an amnesiac. During the credits we see him in an Asian bar, suggesting the series is far from over.
Minor fanboy gripe: continuity is broken from the comics and the previous movies- Sabretooth is a completely different character than in X-Men. Major gripe: clunky plot device. Stryker, knowing he cannot kill the neigh-indestructible Wolverine, decides to give him amnesia, not with a good old frying pan to the head, but with adamantium bullets. Kudos for putting Gambit in the movie. His small but important role is more or less a gift to fans, kind of a ‘sorry about the amnesia with adamantium bullets’ thing. Origins was not a great as the hype, but this happens so often that I automatically reduce my expectations by half for any big budget blockbuster. Going in with my hopes thus halved, I was not let down.