A multimillion dollar pile of tedium.

| Sep 5, 2017

Most of all, I love being able to say finally that Hugh Jackman killed as The Wolverine.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 15, 2017

Japan seems valued more for its scenery and costumes than anything having to do with its character.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 14, 2015

The action is swift, Jackman is jacked, and the 3D looks great. Where the film falters is the final act, which turns into a silly cartoon.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 23, 2015

It's a relief to come across a blockbuster that finds a location and stays there, rather than hopping desperately from one place to the next ...

| Aug 9, 2013

A gingery palate cleanser in a summer of overcooked Big Macs.

| Original Score: B+ | Aug 2, 2013

Getting [Wolverine] to the movie's above-average finale required three writers - Christopher McQuarrie, Mark Bomback, and Scott Frank - to pad the plot.

| Original Score: C+ | Jul 29, 2013

...this serious script suddenly reaches for cheesy catchphrase dialogue toward the end, in what seems to be an act of desperation.

| Jul 26, 2013

It restores the tarnished lustre to this most fan-beloved of Marvel characters by doing precisely what Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's near-sacred 1982 run did: It pumps some feeling into the guy along with his muscles and steel talons.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2013

Director James Mangold's film features some breathtakingly suspenseful action sequences, exquisite production and costume design and colorful characters, some of whom register more powerfully than others.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2013

Too quickly the random fights pile up -- so many yakuza thugs who forgot to wear chain mail that morning -- and you yearn for the film that might have been.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 26, 2013

Mangold front-loads the action, but near the end there's a first-rate fight atop a bullet train between Wolverine/Logan and some especially pesky ninjas. It puts the train fights in the recent The Lone Ranger to shame.

| Original Score: B | Jul 26, 2013

We've seen better. We've seen worse. Have another few yards ready for me in a years' time.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 26, 2013

The idea of Wolverine fighting off waves of yakuza and ninjas amid shoji screens is tantalizing, but Mangold bungles the staging and cuts so fast that you can't ever savor their silhouettes.

Full Review | Jul 26, 2013

Whether in the fights or the love scenes, we don't know where to invest our emotional energy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 26, 2013

It's a credit to the production team that these elements somehow work, with the movie at its best as a superhero/Asian crime drama mash-up.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 26, 2013

Although The Wolverine eventually falls back on a comic-book formula and CG effects (the climactic face-off between Logan and a giant silver warriorlike thing is totally generic), Mangold and his team find time to explore more nuanced realms ...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 26, 2013

A handful of bold ideas brought down by the need to regress to a blander, more box-office-friendly middle ground.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jul 25, 2013

The Wolverine represents a strain of faux gravitas that squeezes nearly all the fun out of blockbuster moviemaking. Here we have multimillion-dollar proof that slow and unsure can be just as dull as hyperkinetic chaos.

| Original Score: C- | Jul 25, 2013

A refreshing summer cocktail of action-movie staples, The Wolverine combines the bracingly adult flavor of everyone's favorite mutant antihero with the fizzy effervescence of several mixers from the cabinet of Japanese genre cinema.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 25, 2013