Reviews: Wolverine & Fighting

Original Sin

Every year, audiences are subjected to a film that has the distinct honor of opening the summer movie season. The only problem that tends to arise is that it is often a gamble as to whether or not you're going to get a quality film or not. Take last year: Iron Man was a film that exceeded nearly everyone's expectations, and rightfully so. You had a great performance from the unlikely hero Robert Downey Jr. plus a good supporting cast surrounding him. The only hiccup the film had was a rather lame villain from Jeff Bridges, but that wasn't enough to bring down the best movie of 2008's summer until that guy in the bat suit rolled around two months later. Then take a look at the year before that: Spider-Man 3. After everything that has been panned with that film, I hope I don't need to explain why it is certainly no Iron Man. Unfortunately, neither is film despite some lingering potential for it to please.

As the title suggests, the film's plot centers on the origin story of Logan, aka Wolverine, and chronicles the events in his life before he is introduced in the first X-Men film. Discovering his special abilities being able to grow sharp bones between his knuckles, he runs away from his mid nineteenth century home with his brother Victor (Liev Schriber; the character will soon be known as Sabertooth) and they fight in every war from the Civil to Vietnam. During this time is when he is recruited into a special task force with other mutants and is commanded by military commander William Stryker. After some tactical disagreements, Logan leaves the group.

Years later, he discovers Victor is hunting down many of the other mutants from the group and tries to stop him, especially after he kills the love of his life. Soon, he finds out the bigger plans of Victor and Stryker, and summons up all that mutant power to try and stop them.

I really enjoyed the first two X-Men movies, and a major part of that was director Bryan Singer. Like all of his movies, he's been able to take those isolated personal feelings of his (he's adopted, gay, and Jewish, a perfect combination to direct this series) and flushed out character driven pieces that also indulged the action senses. When the series was hijacked by Brett Ratner, we had far too many characters introduced, and I couldn't care less about what the plot meant to any of them because I wasn't allowed enough time to get to know them. The same is true with this film. Too many characters are present, and some of them disappear as lazily as they entered. Ryan Reynolds and Dominic Monaghan, who play a smart mouth sword wielder and a telekinetic with electrical powers, are interesting characters granted nearly one scene. The long awaited arrival of Gambit also feels forced and unnecessary, which is a shame given his potential as a character, and the same thing is said for Will.i.am's teleporting mutant. Once again, too much time is devoted to uninteresting characters, and too little time to the interesting ones.

Having said that, Jackman still proves that he is capable to deliver a solid action performance, and those expecting what he has done before with this character probably won't be disappointed. But then, Wolverine was never my favorite character in the X-Men gallery. His screams, punching and rippling muscles will please the men and women in the audience, which is what he's always been doing. Schriber is also a nice addition, adding some real personality to a character that could have easily become pedestrian and bland. I'd also add the always great Danny Huston to that mix, who plays Stryker. He's a real good "bad guy" actor and his menace is very convincing.

When all those other elements fail, one would normally think the technicals would back the film up to support it, right? Well, Gavin Hood's idea of good visual effects are laughable. I believe even an audience with an untrained eye will be able to spot the really fake looking claws attached to Jackman's hand as well as the crumbling nuclear tower with the flying Gambit running toward it. Despite winning an Oscar for his foreign film Tsotsi, Hood seems to be on a serious decline, as his previous effort was the horrendous Rendition. To be fair, Hood can keep the action going in many scenes and he doesn't let the film simmer too much in exposition and stale dialogue, but when it does happen, it's like Sabertooth's nails on a chalkboard and brings the film to an abrupt halt.

Evidently, the first attempt to branch off this series with films dedicated to one character has been the most successful attempt. I think it could have been only if it had gotten control over it's story. For me, I don't many many of these characters beyond what I remember from a long ago videogame, so introducing them and providing no explanation is not a set up I want. A more limited scope and perhaps more emphasis on the Logan/Victor/Stryker relationship would have been a good way to win my approval (more time with Reynolds, Monaghan, or even Tim Pocock playing a young Cyclops). Instead there is a very weak story that especially feels rushed at the end coupled with some sparingly impressive visual effects. I'd be interested to see what they'll do with the series for Magneto, played wonderfully by Ian McKellen in the previous films. I'll hold out for that effort much more that I did with this one. **1/2 / ****; GRADE: C+



Don't Retread on Me

There's a lot of reasons why one might disregard this film and pass it up completely, and to be honest, there are times when this movie makes a good case for that argument. I mean, come on, if the poster next to this review wasn't bland enough, just look at the unimpressive title to the movie. But at least you know exactly what you'd be getting with this film. Or will you? That's the interesting thing about Fighting. Just when you think you'd only be getting the precise same formula done over and over again, and by the overcharged loads in last year's howlingly bad Never Back Down, you instead get only most of the same formula, and the rest is sprinkled with some surprises that actually make this a better film than normally.

The central plot concerns Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum), a broke Alabama native living the minimalist life in New York when while selling bootleg copies of "Harry Potter vs. the Hippopotamus", he picks a fight with a potential mugger. This, of course, catches the eye of Harvey Boarden (Terrence Howard), a well to do street hustler who wants to get Shawn involved with secret underground fights that people bet on. Throw into that a budding romance with a waitress at a club (Zulay Valez) and a rivalry with a former colleague (Brian J. White) and you have pretty much the whole premise of the film.

I'm not going to lie that the film is far from perfect, and much of that has to do with the story. The plot is just as ambitious as the film's title, and we the audience can see where every turn is going and every new twist revealed. That's a shame, considering director and co-writer Dito Montiel received high praise for his directorial debut A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (also featuring Tatum). Why such a lack luster story exists for this film is beyond me.

Tatum does do mildly well in a role that obviously doesn't require too much from him beyond looking good with his shirt off, and he does show that given the right material, he can carry a film as an attractive lead role. However, you can seriously say that he's about all the cast can offer, as everyone else plays their roles over the top to a mind numbing point. Even Howard, who I normally love, is annoyingly bad here. I don't know if it's his speech patterns or what, but everytime he begins to talk, my mind wants to switch off.

Having said all that, there are some redeemable aspects about the film that almost pull it out of it's hole. For instance, some of the fighting scenes pack a more realistic and heavy punch than most other films of this sort has, even though for a movie called "Fighting", there is actually very little of it in the movie. But I would point out that the last two in particular will actually hold some suspense in your mind and you'll feel like you're rooting Shawn on with the other spectators as well. Also, even though I didn't care for how Howard played Harvey, I did appreciate the way his character was handled. One would normally expect Harvey to be Shawn's enemy in the final act, but he actually turns out to be his greatest friend. That was an area I didn't expect to see that character go, and almost didn't recognize it because it's so unused. It was a good play for a movie that was limited in that amount.

In the end, I won't say that Fighting is a terrible film, but I think it has too many faults within its tame and pedestrian story for any kind of remarkable recommendation to come through. Ultimately, I can't say one halfway descent performance, an interesting and unexpected character arch, and two out of four well staged fight scenes are enough to overlook the other major problems of the story and weak acting from the other members of the cast. There is something salvageable in the film, but when it's all over, Fighting becomes a movie that's better than it should have been, but not quite as good as it could have been. **1/2 / ****; GRADE: B-