Starring: Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, Danny Huston and Lynn Collins
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011
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Our nation’s representation is not inconsiderable. Donald McAlpine is the quality cinematographer, local thespians Julia Blake and Max Cullen have a nice scene as a kindly farm couple and Peter O’Brien is prominent at the start of the movie, which was mainly shot in New South Wales (but also in New Zealand and Canada). A punster might almost rename it ‘Australia, You’ve Got Talons’.
A pre-title sequence shows Jimmy Logan as a child in the 1850s discovering his mutant capabilities when he attacks his father to stop him beating up his mother. Then the opening titles are interspersed with a montage showing grown-up Jimmy (Jackman) fighting alongside his brother Victor (Liev Schreiber) in the American Civil War, in the trenches of France in the Great War, landing at Normandy in World War 2 and fighting in choppers in Vietnam. Ageless, unable to be killed and possessed of superhuman powers, they are a more than handy fighting duo.
After Vietnam, Colonel Stryker (Danny Huston) recruits them into a special military unit with other mutants. Their first job is to go to Nigeria to find the remains of a meteorite made of the metal adamantium, but the operation is so ruthless that Logan rebels against the killing, particularly brother Victor’s naked blood lust, and quits the unit.
He retires in anonymity to a remote hut in the Canadian Rockies with his lady love, the schoolteacher Kayla Silverfox (Lynn Collins) and is working happily as a lumberback when his past catches up with him: Victor (also known as Sabretooth) is methodically bumping off the members of the mutant unit, and Kayla falls victim. Stryker appears on the scene and persuades Logan to take on his brother and to allow scientists to inject adamantium into his body, bonding with his bones to make him indestructible. “You will suffer more pain than any human can endure but you will have your revenge,” Stryker promises.
And so it goes – Logan engages in all sorts of preposterous fight sequences with sundry opponents who can fly through the air and perform all sorts of tricks until the inevitable final showdown with bad brother Victor, which takes place for maximum spectacle atop a giant nuclear reactor. The movie delivers plenty of action, but never rises above its comic book origins. Kayla’s protestations to Logan that he is more than just an animal are meant to be the film’s sensitive centre, but they seem rather hollow in the midst of all the slashings, stabbings and thumpings being handed out willy-nilly.
Hugh Jackman is quite good at producing the grim granite look required by these tongue-in-cheek adventures, and Liev Schreiber is a fine villain. Fans of the series will identify many of the mutant characters from the three earlier films and meet some new ones who will doubtless figure in further instalments.
The director is Gavin Hood, who made the Oscar-winning South African film Tsotsi five years ago. He acquits himself well in this high-adventure league, although one would suspect that five visual effects companies credited had a fair say in how the finished product turned out.
Those who don’t rush out of the cinema as soon as the end credits start rolling will be rewarded with a neat 30-second postlude that rounds the movie off nicely.
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