Normally big studios prefer to milk their superheroes like worshiped cash cows, squeezing the teats til the very last dollar squishes out.......(but then again, there's always the promise of prequels....and right now as we speak, there are probably two million young actors practicing their snarls in front of mirrors, dreaming of their eventual casting as Wolver-Teen....)
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But for now, let us bid a fond farewell to Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Patrick Stewart's Professor X.......as they take their leave of us, awash in a sea of gore.....
As is our custom, we won't bother with plot points of a movie that's already been reviewed and blogged about 8 million times.........we'll just skip to the cool stuff.....
R-Rated Carnage Unfettered and unimpeded by a PG-13, Hugh can finally let us see what really happens when his Adamantine claws tear through human beings........and wow, it's even better than what a set of Ginsu knives does to carrots and tomatoes in those infomercials......
Speaking of Adamantine......As usual, the FDA was way too late in issuing its warning about having unbreakable steel blended into your DNA.......the stuff's killing Hugh faster than a carton of Marlboro's and a year's worth of McRibs......but he doesn't have the time or the temperament to make a public service announcement like Yul Brynner did......
Little Wolverina.....Dafne Keen, unquestionably the movie's MVP.........and the definitive answer to any studio executive's demand....."get me a younger Chloe Grace Moretz!" Raised across the border by a Mexican nurse, this makes Wolverina Donald Trump's worst nightmare.....an undocumented Dreamer who can behead people who piss her off.....(one can only hope she finds her way to the White House in the sequel.....)
Villains, Villains, Villains.....The usual Evil Scientist From Equally Evil Hi-Tech Corporation.....played by Richard E Grant, looking very Richard E. Gaunt.....also some snarky young creep with a robotic hand who, like all the other varied "X-Men" movie villains, stupidly manhandles X-kids who can spit tornadoes out of their nostrils or whatever the hell else they do.....
Also thrown into the mix.....a bunch of pickup truck thugs who harass and menace a black family who've befriended our fugitive trio of the Prof. X, Wolverine and Little Wolverina. These guys seem dropped in from one of those 1970's "I ain't takin' it anymore'" Drive-In revenge actioners......for those of you not familiar with this genre, pickup truck thugs exist only to exit their pickup trucks and get their asses roundly kicked......usually by Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin (whose nutty work we'll cover in future posts....) Rest assured, Wolverine has to seriously Billy Jack these guys.....
Further Proof (as if we needed any) Of Bette Davis's Warning, "Aging Isn't For Wussies".....Poor 90 year old Prof. X suffers from brain farts that cause untold physical and mental damage to everyone and everything in his vicinity........sort of like Trump's tweets but with a shorter range of destruction.........and we thought our middle-of-the-night farts were bad.....
We'll put our mocking overview aside for a moment to honestly praise Hugh Jackman, who elevates this film with his genuinely moving conception of a tragic hero undone by his own flaws......or in this case, claws. It would constitute an award-worthy performance.....if it didn't take place inside a movie whose main agenda involves racking up a record R-rated body count......
Not particularly fun to sit through.....and we doubt we'd ever re-visit it, but for Hugh Jackman and Dafne Keen's exemplary performances that manage to rise above all the carnage, we'll claw out 2 & 1/2 stars (** 1/2)........(and please, please, we hope to never again read or hear about some comic book movie actor discussing his character as if he's in a Tennessee Williams play ("Yeh, sure the guy can shoot laser beams out of his eyes...but he's....uh....conflicted..")
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