The Wolverine

I’m not a comic book devotee. I only know X-Men from the movies. So I could be wrong about this, but I wonder if The Wolverine will be a comic book movie that appeals more to X-Men readers than to blockbuster audiences who aren’t already deeply invested in the mythology but just want a pile-on of mutant action. Because that’s not what we have here. It’s big in terms of action – but at its heart, The Wolverine is all about Logan, as a mutant and as a man.

It’s almost a bit of soap opera that Logan is drawn into here, a multigenerational family drama revolving around dying Yashida (Hal Yamanouchi), the richest industrialist in Japan. Logan knew him years earlier, when Yashida was a soldier during World War II and Logan was – for reasons we never learn – a prisoner of war in Nagasaki on the day the Americans dropped the A-bomb. Now, today, Yashida’s dying wish is to see Logan again; he sends his granddaughter Yukio (Rila Fukushima) to fetch him. (Well, she’s not actually his granddaughter. It’s complicated.)

Logan (Hugh Jackman) is reluctant to be drawn, however. Hell, he’s reluctant to have much human contact at all. He’s living like a hermit in the snowy mountains of (I presume) his native Canada. His best friend is a bear. And then that gets sad too. But he gives in, in that gloriously cranky way Hugh Jackman has of making Logan simultaneously a mountain of muscle tied up in misanthropy. Yukio sees it. But she’s a mutant and she’s a woman, and she doesn’t need mutant powers to see right through Logan.

Then we’re in Japan. No movie has ever made me more want to go to Tokyo than this one. Director James Mangold stages a footchase through the city streets that is thrilling, like if The Bourne Identity was about mutants. The action scenes, and, later, the secret society of medieval ninjas with poisoned arrows, all add up to extreme cool.

And all very soap opera, too. Even kinda fan-fiction-y. Logan is a roiling bundle of angst and emotional torment and aching vulnerability. It makes him even more attractive when he takes his shirt off all those times. He is haunted by the ghost of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), who keeps begging him to just figure out how to die already and join her in the afterlife. And this is a genuine possibility here. Because Yashida had discovered a way that Logan could transfer his healing ability to someone else – say, Yashida, maybe – and give an old man new life, and finally Logan could become a real boy. No way, Logan says, but then after the bullet train and the footchase and the ninjas, his wounds aren’t healing. What the hell? Wolverine has found his kryptonite.

I don’t want to make this sound gloomy. It’s good summer fun. Jackman continues to clearly enjoy the hell out of playing the character, even after, what, six outings now? In fact, a low-key turn for Logan is precisely what was called for. As bombastic action movies go, this is downright relaxing.

THE WOLVERINE (3) • Directed by James Mangold • Starring Hugh Jackman, Rila Fukushima, Will Yun Lee • Rated PG-13 • 126 min •At Century Cinemas Del Monte, Maya Cinemas, Northridge Cinemas, Lighthouse Cinemas, Cannery Row XD