INTERNATIONAL CLAW

“To die! To be really dead! That must be glorious!”

This was the opinion of Count Dracula, as played by Bela Lugosi, and there have been plenty of other characters who have warned us that immortality—physical immortality, at any rate—is no picnic.

The latest is the title character of The Wolverine, the Marvel mutant superhero, armed with a metal skeleton and retractable metal claws, as well as the ability to quickly regenerate when wounded. Thus Wolverine, aka Logan, has been alive and in fighting trim since the most recent days when his bushy mutton chops wouldn’t make him look ridiculous—the 19th Century, in other words.

The new film is a stand-alone adventure, set in Japan, in which the brooding, world-weary Wolverine, played once again by Hugh Jackman, visits an old acquaintance from his WWII POW days, who offers him a chance at regular physical mortality. The trouble is that however much of a drag immortality may be, it turns out that it comes in really handy when you’re tangling not only with murderous opponents like ninjas and yakuza goons, but also with a venom-spitting snake-woman and a giant metallic suit of samurai armor.

Director James Mangold, working from a script credited to Scott Frank and Mark Bomback, moves the lavish production along, and he makes atmospheric use of the Japanese settings. There’s a funny, ingeniously-worked-out fight on top of a bullet train, for instance, and another memorable sequence where our hero gets riddled with arrows, a bit like Toshiro Mifune at the end of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.

The Wolverine is given a love interest here, the Yakuza’s beautiful daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto). But he seems to have a lot more fun with Mariko’s adoptive sister Yukio (Rila Fukushima), who becomes Logan’s self-appointed sword-wielding bodyguard and sidekick. Fukushima’s odd and oddly appealing face is full of puckish life, and Jackman gives the brooding a rest in his scenes with her. For me, she was easily the best thing about the picture.

Jackman manages the title role with the same lithe, effortless physicality he showed in the earlier films in the series. I must confess, though, that the fascination with this character, an associate of both the X-Men and The Avengers, eludes me. It may be a matter of chronology; he first appeared in the mid-70s, around the time that I stopped reading comics religiously. I wasn’t really aware of him until the X-Men movies started coming out.

But there’s no question that the fascination is real: Wolverine has gradually become one of the most beloved of superheroes of all time. A few years ago a friend of mine, then in his twenties, truly tried to get his wife to let him name their son Wolverine. He finally got her to settle for “Logan.” I’m not kidding.

I enjoyed The Wolverine well enough, but if you’re of this guy’s mindset, I’d say it’s a must-see. Then again, if you’re of this guy’s mindset, you’ll probably see it no matter what I say.