X-men origins: wolverine

A+

It shows, a la Spiderman, that an action-fantasy can dare to have thoughtful conversational pauses.

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Two years after its release date (2009), X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked better than I'd thought it would. The director's name, Gavin Hood, deserved research, as he should have gone on to further glory on the block-buster scene. [*]

Hugh Jackman also gave himself an above-average supporting cast. Liev Schreiber was an ideal equally indestructible elder brother with murderous mutant skills and vicious extendable finger nails. Danny Huston yet again perfectly personified sweet-talking evil intent as the obsessed Dr Hyde of mutant research.

Fellow mutants were cameo roles played competently (including Ryan Reynolds in a breakthrough comic macho performance). Even the female interest, a First Nation Canadian schoolteacher, was well written and characterised (played by Texan Lynn Collins).

The SFX were handsomely explosive: it was clear why Jackman lost his cool when an un-effected print was stolen and widely spread on the internet.

The good and innocent victims were too good to be true, but they always must be in the graphic novella empire of Stan Lee and Marvel DC comic books.

This spin-off from the X-Men franchise did more than fill in Logan/Wolverine's background (originating two centuries earlier according to the comic-book military capers sequence in the brothers-at-war action prologue). It showed, a la Spiderman, that an action-fantasy can dare to have thoughtful conversational pauses.

[* South Africa-born Gavin Hood's career path stumbled. After the former lawyer and actor studied film at the Uni of California, he wrote, directed and took the lead role in the SA-set 1999 award-winning A Reasonable Man (co-starring Nigel Hawthorne). Replacing the sick director of a Polish film on location in South Africa (2001) and the follow-up TV mini-series, he stayed there to write and direct his breakthrough 2005 Best Foreign Film Oscar-winner, Tsotsi, adapted from an Athol Fugard novel. That led to Hollywood giving him Rendition, a 2007 political thriller that flopped. Subsequently, he directed three TV series/dramas while preparing Ender's Game, his adaptation of a Mormon author's sci-fi fantasy, due for release in 2013.]